


The Devil in Divine Providence

by starstuddedsin



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Bestiality, Bondage, Boypussy, Breast Fucking, Breeding, Choking, Cruelty, Fisting, Forced Pregnancy, Humiliation, Lactation, M/M, MC ends up falling for anyone who is nice to him and sticks a cock in his throat, Mentions of mutilation, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slavery, Spitroasting, Whipping, and that is a fair few people, becoming a cockslut, eating weird shit in order to sate unquenchable demonic thirst, extreme oral fixation, gang rape but also consensual gangbang, gaping, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:20:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26539480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstuddedsin/pseuds/starstuddedsin
Summary: Arody is a changeling, the evil child of a witch and the devil. He is forbidden to speak, lest he speak a spell. His only purpose is to be beaten and fucked against his will, and to be useful. To bear useful monsters for the Blessed Elder, a holy deacon, and the Blessed Elder’s family.But then a group of soldiers comes to town. And they want Arody for so much more.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Original Male Character(s)/Other(s), Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 63
Kudos: 372





	1. The Changeling

**Author's Note:**

> I love weird boys becoming cocksluts, so jot that down.

Arody was woken by the Blessed Elder’s fingers twisting one of his nipples. 

He gave an exhale of pain, then clapped his hands to his mouth in horror at having made any sound at all. His heart was beating too fast. His chest twinged with the Elder's vicious pinches.

His breasts, still painfully leaking milk from carrying his third remonstrance, were a great fascination to the Blessed Elder. So was Arodi’s soft little gut, just a small pouch on his otherwise skinny frame, distended from stretching to accommodate the too-large creature that had been inside him not two months ago. And Arody’s cunt was different now, too. It didn’t gape, precisely, not the way it always did those first few days after a birth. But it wasn’t the perfect little slit it had been once. Pushing out the third remonstrance had left it a dirty dark color, with the inner lips hanging down a bit past the outer, the hole more pliable and much less pretty. 

_Don’t cry,_ the Blessed Elder had said. _How vain you are! This is heaven’s way of making you functional, and teaching you to quell your vanity. Now you suit the divine plan for you._

Certainly, having a ruined body didn’t dissuade the Elder. The Elder had a big, thick prick Arody was familiar with by now. As he rolled and pinched Arody’s nipples, he rutted the heavy pole against Arody’s thigh, right on Arody’s newest scars of penitence. Arody felt the drooling head leave trails of precum, slimy and thick, and gave a little hiccup. 

Then, obediently, he spread his legs. 

He had no idea what hour it was. His little shed-hovel was windowless — just a bed of straw, a metal link in the stone wall, and Arody himself chained to the link by his neck collar. The chain was slack enough that, if he needed to, he could go relieve himself in the chamberpot in the corner. When he’d first been brought to the Blessed Elder's household, he had not been trusted so, but by now he had shown he was about as trustworthy as a changeling could be expected to be. 

It could not be morning yet. Mornings, Pastor Wycham would come and lash him awake, unchain him, and work a rough shift over his head so Arody could go labor in the kitchen, serve breakfast, and then labor some more. And only after the morning, only then, would Arody be returned to his shed, given some meal mingled with water and some coarse bread, and possibly be expected to receive a Seeding. 

Seedlings happened at noon, just after the most difficult work was done. Best to Seed a changeling when the sun was at its highest, and could drive out the darkness and impurity. But now it had to be night, because he hadn’t even been lashed yet. So this wasn’t a Seeding. This was just the Elder's whim. 

Arody found it easier to relax, knowing that. Reasoning that, anyway. He could not know it. Witchlings were supposed to be able to tell the future from the moment of their first spells, but Arody had never cast a spell, and had to simply guess about the nature of his current torment.

Now the Elder took his cock in hand and dragged the blunt head up Arody’s ruined thighs, to the soft, giving little cunt at the center. Half of the Elder’s big weight rested on Arody, leaned into him, the big gut in its crisp white nightshirt rubbing Arody’s smaller stomach as the Blessed Elder arranged himself. His hot breath danced on Arody’s forehead. Arody tried to stay still and pliant, as he knew he should.

But when the Elder breached him, he still felt it. 

It was easier now that he was looser from birthing. Not so brutal as it had been, once. But still not _easy_. The Blessed Elder was too big for that, and he liked to push into Arody in one stroke, burying himself so deep his grizzled grey public hair touched Arody’s sensitive cunt lips. Arody gave another near soundless-squeak at the sudden pain, the heavy cock forcing him to stretch looser. His cunt throbbed horribly as the Elder began to see-saw into him, now adjusting his weight so that he pressed down on Arody completely. 

He crushed the ruined stub of Arody’s cock, that limp, useless bit of flesh. Ground it into Arody’s stomach. Arody wriggled pathetically, blinking, trying not to cry out. The Blessed Elder’s cock was spearing into him, opening him up. He felt tears come unbidden to his eyes. His breath came too fast as his flesh was parted, his hole stretched beyond belief. Too fast. The stretch was unbearable. 

The Blessed Elder didn't care. He drove in deep on every thrust. Forced a rub of skin on sweaty skin, the friction making the beginnings of something build in Arody. Arody smelled the Elder’s heavy breath, could not squirm away from the meaty hands pinning him down as the Elder fucked him with abandon. Arody’s body jerked, helpless. He could feel the rough straw digging into his backside. 

Then the Blessed Elder’s lips latched onto one nipple, suckling, his teeth nipping. This twinged, but it loosed some of the heavy, unpleasant milk swelling up Arody’s breasts. 

Arody’s gasped a bit. His tits were always too heavy, because Pastor Whycham made sure he was milked often enough to not dry up. He hated and loved milkings for that. Such frequent manhandling to his tits meant he was always dripping a bit. But it was also a sweet, unexpected release for him, the heaviness in his chest blessedly dropping away each morning. 

The Blessed Elder’s sucking produced that same sudden lightness, that easing of the tightness in Arody’s nipples. Arody’s cunt began to go damp, despite the pain. 

Slick. And slicker. Now the see-saw fuck clouded up Arody’s mind. He worked his skinny, scarred hips back against the Blessed Elder, clenched his well-worn pussy. Now his brain could process only the hot, relieving suck on his tit, the fat weight bearing him down, the massive pole breaking him open. It was too much sensation. Especially that cock, big flesh rubbing past his cunt lips, into his sore tunnel. Fucking in, making Arody’s body shake, driving Arody down, over and over. Rubbing into him until he gave a little cry and something in him cracked open with pleasure. 

The sweet-poison almond smell of changeling lust filled the air. Arody’s cunt gushed, and Arody himself shoved skinny fingers in his mouth to stop from doing more than squeaking — more was forbidden to him, after all, lest he speak an enchantment.

So now his own thin, clammy digits stroked his tongue. This fogged him up even more. His tongue was the wickedest part of him, but when he _touched_ it--

The Blessed Elder chuckled. He had abandoned Arody’s tit, but was still fucking into Arody. 

His large, ring-covered hand lifted and came down with force, smacking Arody’s tits. Arody jerked, pain blossoming on his chest as the pleasure in his cunt and mouth kept cresting with the rhythm of the fuck. 

“Foul thing!” grunted the Blessed Elder. His hand smacked Arody in time with his thrusts. Arody jerked and jerked, pain on his jaw, his collarbone, his tit again. “Foul slattern! Filthy! Take it, filthy devil!”

Arody was not allowed to speak. His tongue always grew back every time they cut it out — witchling tongues always did — but he hated having it cut at all. It was a special pain, bright and immense and horrific. So he kept his fingers in his mouth to quell any of the noises he might make, kept his tongue wriggling in ecstacy, in sin, and took the beating. 

“Take! My! Cum!” grunted the Blessed Elder, as his big cock erupted inside Arody. Hot, thick human cum pumped into Arody’s cunt. Arody squeezed his eyes closed and worked his hips. His mind felt open, clear, and so good, despite all the pain in his body. His fingers stroked his tongue, happy, as the Elder's big cock rubbed deep inside him.

This was -- was almost nice. This was nothing like the Seeding. 

That burned. Seared. And they didn’t stop until they swelled up Arody’s belly, stretching the skin there so painfully he couldn’t help but cry out. 

But this, this was just a fuck, of the sort Arody had taken just about every night he was alive, and for now the cum only sat like a heavy slime in his cunt, a weight his hungry tongue could almost taste. The cum burbled out a bit when the Blessed Elder finally pulled out of him. He wiped his cock on Arody’s thigh, clasped one bruised tit for a moment, and then — finally — shuffled away to the main house for a nightcap. 

-

Dried cum still crusted Arody’s inner thighs the next morning. 

Goody Wyhcham didn’t blink at it, when the Pastor dragged Arody into the kitchen and set him to making the fine Holyday bread the family would have tomorrow. Arody obediently kneaded under her watchful eye, not wanting to be lashed. He had already been lashed awake, right on his once-again-heavy tits. He could expect to be lashed every day. But, if he was quiet, perhaps he would not be lashed too much. 

Humility, Innocence, and May-He-Destroy-the-Wicked joined their mother in the kitchen when Arody was nearly done. The Whychams could not abide laziness and sleeping in, but their three daughters were still permitted to sleep later than Arody. Like all the women of Divine Providence, they wore simple, neat grey dresses and tied their hair back modestly, but Arody knew Humility had several very immodest hair ribbons for her thick carroty curls, and that Innocence possessed an embroidered set of small clothes. 

Innocence knew he knew it. Now she sauntered forward, pert nose in the air, and stood towering over Arody. All the Whychams were tall, and Arody no bigger than the average goodwife, so towering was not hard for Innocence to do. 

“Mother,” Innocence said, a whining tone creeping into her voice. “Look at the _state_ of him. It’s indecent.”

“Hmm?” said Goody Whycham, scarcely looking up from her basket of mending. She did not concern herself too much with Arody, other than to see that he did what he was told, and so her pink, even-featured face with its pale brows, so like that of her daughter’s, did not register much emotion at all. 

Innocent twirled the end of her golden braid, looking Arody over assessingly. Arody focused on his bread, trying not to hiccup or show his dismay. It was always worse when he showed his dismay. Now he felt Humility coming up on his other side. 

May, ever the least horrible of the three, did not approach him at all, but simply went to the butter churn and occupied herself with her own business. 

Innocence’s hand closed on his skinny forearm. 

“Go to mother,” she instructed. “Turn over. Show her your hole of perversion.”

Arody didn’t let himself think. Changelings weren’t thinking creatures. Perhaps that was why sometimes he just — went away. His mind was pleasantly dull and away when he kneeled obediently before Goody Whycham, back to her, and lifted his backside like Innocence and Humility liked him too. Exposed his well-fucked, loose cunt, felt the cold morning air play on the place he’d been violated not hours before. 

“Who did you seduce now?” Humility hissed. “Father? Fortitude? It’s disgusting that he is permitted to live among decent women, Mother, it really is—“

“We must ever entangle ourselves with the worst creatures, for your Blessed Elder is the deacon,” blinked Goody Whycham, without much feeling. It was like she was looking in on the goats in the pen outside, or perhaps one of the sows. Arody was classed with the household livestock, after all. 

“Has he not been cleaned this week?” wondered the goodwife, after a half-second. “How ugly his place of devious sinning looks!”

“The Divine shows us all things as they are and should be,” Innocence quoted from Scripture, with a wicked grin. “Still, it’s clear. He’s been taking pleasure, mother, in the flesh again—“

“Slut,” Humility coughed out. 

“Father will have to _beat_ him—“

“I expect so,” Goody Whycham said, still sounding quite guileless about the whole thing. 

Humility came forward now and jabbed a finger into the mess of Arody’s cunt. It was a sudden pain, stirring up the ache of the night before. 

“Disgusting,” Humility pronounced. “Be grateful to Father for wasting his time on trying to reform you, witch.”

Arody was far away, quietly playing his tongue against the roof of his mouth, feeling the little thrums of pleasure from that. So he only nodded. But he thought he saw May look up at him and grimace at the quiet tears on his thin cheeks.

-

Once, he knew he must have been demonically beautiful. 

All changelings were. They were born of witches who copulated with the devil, and that was why Arody looked as he did. Slender, small, and inhumanly tempting to men and women alike. He had a pretty mouth, he had been told, and nails of bright pearl-gold, and he had thick dark hair with a decided reddish tint. Pastor Whycham made sure it was cropped close to his skull, to prevent him from tempting anyone, but it grew so swiftly that Arody had to have his hair cut near-weekly. It grew like Arody’s demon tongue grew. His nails replaced themselves whenever the Pastor ripped them out (once a month, to keep them from becoming demonic claws) and eyes, too, always healed very quickly, big luminous black eyes, completely black, even what ought to have been the whites. Unsettling and ever-perfectly wicked. 

But the rest of Arody was rather useless at healing. His back bled and scarred, and his thighs. His hips and breasts and and stomach were veined with stretch marks. His cock certainly hadn’t grown back from the time it was culled, chopped down to a useless nub to prevent him from ever copulating with an innocent woman. His tail was a nub, too. He couldn't remember ever having had it. It had been cleaved off too young, and now was little more than a small lump of scars above his meager backside.

And his cunt took pain as what it was. Pain. Arody kneeled in the straw of the hayloft, breathing hard, his cheek to the dirty floor. And used his hands to bare his cunt again, pull back the lips. 

He could feel, spurting out as if to evidence Innocence and Humility’s claims, the last of the Blessed Elder’s thick cum. Heavy in him, pooling out as Arody opened himself up to Pastor Whycham’s ideas of penitence. 

He hoped it wasn’t the small crop. That was light, swishy, and horribly biting. It hurt the worst, and cut with every stroke to his skin. The heavy leather lash left worse bruises, and the nine-tailed flogger painted his pale skin nearly as badly, but they weren’t like the small crop, which scarred every time it touched him. 

“Hm,” Pastor Whycham said, and Arody could imagine the way he must be now bringing a hand to his temples. “Who was it? Was it Fortitude?”

Arody shook his head against the floor. He could feel his shoulders shaking. He was still crying, a bit. Even when he was far away, he cried a bit. 

“Oh,” said Pastor Whycham, with sudden understanding. “ _Oh_. Well. It’s not such a transgression then. _He_ ’s divinely elected. There isn’t much he can do that’s a sin to him.”

Arody nodded now, feeling the straw scrape and tickle his chin. He was pathetically grateful that Pastor Whycham believed him. Of course, Arody never lied, not really. He found it very difficult to lie. It was a thing his brain could never wrap itself around. But the Whychams wouldn’t have believed him even if he’d dared to defy the town Elders' edicts regarding his silence by telling them that. As far as the Sanctified were concerned, Arody must lie all the time, being what he was, which was evil in living form. 

“It’s still a transgression for you, you understand,” said Pastor Whycham, reasoning it out. “You’re not elect. Any wickedness you do is not pardoned by divinity, but rather confirms your place in the fires of hell, which—“

He drifted off, becoming theological in his mumbling. 

Arody nodded and nodded. He was always transgressing. Other than the nods, he tried to stay in place now, still baring his sensitive slit to the cool morning air. He wanted to press his tongue against the roof of his mouth, his teeth. Just to comfort himself. But it would only make his cunt wet, and then Pastor Whycham would ask if he was pleasuring himself, and then he would be unable to lie, and then the beating would only be worse.

Pastor Whycham was still mumbling. 

“—somewhere below a warlock, even, and, as you can be drowned and not die, burnt with coals and not killed, there is to be no salvation. I believe we decided that when you were five. Still, being as _my_ salvation rests upon my acts, I should not let this slide. But there is breakfast to consider, and morning prayers. It wouldn’t do to fall behind in the tasks of the day. I will make this quick. You're sure to earn another beating, in any case. You always do."

Arody nodded at this. He found himself -- as Humility had instructed him to be -- grateful. 

"Five," decided the Pastor.

That was nothing. He was so grateful.

"With the nine-tails," said the Pastor. "Across your bottom. I want you to count them out as you feel the penance."

 _So_ grateful. He exhaled, hard, and let his hands drop to the floor at his sides, but kept his rear in the air. Waved it, to show his agreement. Pastor Whycham rustled about behind him, reaching for the nine-tails on its nail by the sloped ceiling.

He didn't give Arody any warning when he brought it down. He never did. The pain split across Arody's flesh, and he was luckily so practiced at taking it that he made not a sound. He scratched out a line in the straw with his right hand (not his left, _never_ the left, not unless he wanted more lashes) to show he was counting.

"Good," said Pastor Whycham distractedly. 

With a whistle, the nine-tails struck again. Arody's backside was on fire, hurt erupting, some of the hits tearing him open. He could feel the wells of blood as acutely as he could his scratchy woolen shift, forced up around his tits. He focused on making the next line in the straw. Two. That was two.

"Good," said Pastor Whycham. 

Then again. Three. Arody's hand shook as he traced out the count. Now there wasn't any part of his rear that didn't hurt. He would be a mass of colors, purple-green-red. He already had been, but those older bruises had been healing. But he was never really allowed to fully heal. It wouldn't truly hurt him, Pastor Whycham said. Like the drowning and the coals had never hurt him.

"Good," said Pastor Whycham.

He struck again. Arody forced himself to make a fourth line, though the fourth hit knocked most of the sense from him. He was pressing his tongue against the roof of his mouth, desperate to escape the pain. His eyes were nothing but wet. His rump hurt so badly. The fourth lash had caught the nub of his tail, and set his entire brain on fire.

"Good," said Pastor Whycham, for to beat a witch-changeling was _right_ , was _good_ , and then he loosed the final blow, and Arody managed to scratch the fifth line, obediently, before he blinked and passed out.

-

When he woke, he was strapped into place to be milked.

The leather collar around his neck cut into his skin. He shifted uncomfortably. But, because the bench he was tied to was flat and splintery, unpleasant as it rubbed his flesh, he soon stopped that. His shift had been pulled down now, to his hips, so that his breasts could dangle on either side of the thin panel of wood. Pastor Whycham was seated before him, pulling on his gloves and muttering.

"Goody Dunham wants a great hog, foul woman that she is. A hog won't mean you give such good milk. We must consider the milk. That infernal dog left you with the sourest taste I've ever had. No, I think it must be kids and calves for you--"

Seeding. He was planning the next Seeding. It was so, so hard not to whimper. Arody had only been Seeded three times, but all the town's Blessed Elders agreed that changelings could be Seeded for as long as they lived, and the especially wicked ones like Arody lived a long time. Longevity was one of the devil's gifts to Arody's kind. The power to tempt was another. So was the ability to whisper spells with every word, quite-powerful spells if they were powered by innocent souls. 

And so was the fertility. That too was a gift. A witchling could bear mad pigs, black cats, and waves of bats. A witchling could bear a horse with eyes of flame, a host of rats, a great serpent. 

Only, Arody was made to bear more useful things. Things that increased the wealth and esteem of the Whychams, and of Divine Providence. The only Divine community to have a living changeling. There were a few living devil-changelings in old Audenlea, serving lords and ladies and such. But in the new land there were nearly none, or at least none the Elders hadn't successfully killed.

Arody had never succeeded at being killed, though. He was too much a child of the devil. He could be scarred and hurt, but not destroyed. So he was turned to usefulness. The Sanctified liked hard work, and piety, and _use_. The Sanctified believed that the world existed to be turned to industry. The children of witches could be no exception.

Now, though Pastor Whycham was massaging his breast, letting the milk spool out, bringing Arody some welcome _relief_ , Arody could feel no real pleasure. Only fear.

"I think another cow. We can set you to gathering the bull's leavings again--"

Arody shuddered. Bit back a whine. Biting his tongue made his eyes water again, the pain so sharp and awful, worse than his fiery backside. But he couldn't make a sound, not even in fear at the Seeding.

"To pump into you properly, get you nice and bred. Perhaps you will give another bull! How perverse it will be to see you grow one the way you do, in mere days--"

That was all the time it took. A little over a week for each carrying. Arody's body was a foul cauldron, and it would swell painfully, quickly, the cum taking root inside him and the devil's magic making him fat and heavy with any animal the Whychams might desire. He hated it, hated the ever-constant fog of weight and pain he carried in those days. Hated feeling the creatures thump and roll about inside him, before they demanded to be birthed in blood and more pain still.

Pastor Whycham finished one tit. Moved on to the other. His hands were cold, his fingers no kinder than the Blessed Elder's had been the night before.

"That's if you are good. If you are not, we can simply have the bull breed you himself--"

Arody shook his head wildly, shook and shook.

He hated the Seeding, hated having the Pastor and the Blessed Elder and Fortitude Whycham converge on him, read the prayers to bind him, take that cruel metal pumping device and pump him up for hours. Hated how they sealed it by sticking their cocks in, plugging him. Two cocks in his cunt -- the men -- while Fortitude forced his mouth open to cut out his tongue, the source of his evil, so as to ensure the creature born would not carry the devil-touch.

But Pastor Whycham was right. There were worse ways, perhaps, to be Seeded.

-

Generally, at breakfast, Fortitude Whycham had his fun with Arody.

Fortitude was as tall as his grandfather, the household's Blessed Elder, and as broad, but his muscle had not yet gone to fat. He was a solid, handsome brick of a fellow, two or three years older than Arody, and thus already a man of eighteen. He had Humility and the Pastor's carroty hair, but he was not hit on his hands quite so often as Humility was for the carroty hair. For one thing, it did not matter if his hair and good looks made Fortitude vain. Men didn't carry vanity the way women and changelings did. Men were permitted a bit more vanity, as a rule. 

Men were permitted more of everything, and so it was that Fortitude could often afford to grope Arody in what ought to have been plain sight. The only one to really suffer for that would be Arody, for causing the temptation in the first place. So Arody was no great fan of breakfast, not any more than he enjoyed any moments he was forced to spend with Fortitude.

But today something else occupied the young master of the Whycham homestead. He didn't so much as glance at Arody as Arody served the family. So Arody discovered that the luck that had kept him only fucked, not Seeded; the luck that meant he was only hit with the nine-tails, not the crop--

It held. 

He was quiet and grateful as he set the plates and spoons before the Whychams. The Blessed Elder first, at the head of the table. Then the Pastor, at the foot. Then Fortitude, then Goody, then the girls. As Arody went back for the large, heavy pot of morning cornmeal paste, his arms straining to lug it to the table, Blessed Elder began his prayers, his voice a deep, authoritative lull. The Whychams sat with their hands clasped, muttering benedictions at the right times. This would be the only talk permitted at breakfast. Silence and piety were Sanctified virtues, and not just for changelings.

Prayer generally took some twenty minutes. By then, Arody had brought out the pewter mugs he had scrubbed the night before, a heaping plate of brown bread he'd made two days ago, a small dish of butter May had churned, and the big tankard of morning beer. He was calm and precise about these tasks, for they were familiar and useful. He'd been serving the Whychams nearly his whole life, ever since his existence was discovered and his witch-mother was put to death for it, and without Fortitude grasping to pinch him or trip him, breakfast was almost a pleasant affair. When he was done serving, he knelt in the corner by the waste-pail and clasped his own hands, bowed his head. He couldn't say the prayers, but he could mouthe them, and they brought him some more comfort.

He didn't know why Fortitude was holding back. He didn't need to know. It was enough to be relieved at it. 

When prayers were done, there came the scrape of spoons on metal bowls. Silence filled the room. Arody kept his eyes closed and let himself rest, mind going blank and far away again. They would call him back when they needed something, needed the butter or the beer refilled. His bottom hurt and his cunt ached, but his tits were empty and his tongue was a little curling worm of sweet pleasure in his mouth. He could move it against his gums and let the sensitive forked tip touch, and no one would know as long as he was still and quiet, and didn't go too far in his secret comforts. 

"Grandfather," Fortitude said sharply.

The clangs of cutlery stilled. Arody opened his eyes. He beheld the Whychams -- carroty Pastor and Humility, pale Innocence and Goody, mousy-brown May, and the huge, grey Elder -- looking on Fortitude with puzzled disfavor. 

"Forgive me," Fortitude said, his voice so smooth and clear that perhaps only Arody could taste the oiliness beneath it. "I know I should pray, I _will_ pray, for forgiveness for disrupting our breakfast hour with my chatter. But it seems to me that perhaps you were not aware, Blessed Grandfather. Colonel Tolland was sighted at Riverview an hour ago. I heard it from Goodman Channing, when I took the goats out this morning. It seems the Colonel is headed this way, to Divine Providence."

The silence burst like a bubble, as Humility and Innocence and Goody Whycham fell to hushed gasps, chittering shrieks. Even Pastor Whycham gave a squawk. Fortitude looked pleased at himself, at having prompted everyone to join him in his minor sin.

The Elder only looked stern.

"Your impudence comes from wishing to caution me," he said ponderously. "You ever mean well. But your youth and lack of wisdom are a problem. Divine Providence need not fear the Colonel. We hold with Audenlea's laws, even here in the new land. And even though we need not, being above the sin of that old nation. Still, the Colonel knows we are loyal to the King and Queen, and that we pay their unholy, earthly tithes, even as we acknowledge that their souls will be commended to hell for their impiety. He will not come to do us harm. He will come, likely, to bring us some new law about a tax, or else to spread tidings about the savage wars."

The other Whychams settled, looking relieved. Colonel Tolland fought the Yorrul and the Inokhti, the savages of the North who worshipped trees and horses, and was thus as respected by Divine Providence as he was disliked, derided, and feared. He himself was bound for hell, for he openly kept no religion. He styled himself a man of wondrous reason, which meant that he smoked, drank to excess, kept mistresses, gamed, had served a colonial ambassadorship at the Court of Audenlea, and grew lush silken hemp on his vast plantation, which had made him so wealthy as to seriously throw the doctrine of Divine Success for the Elect into question.

"But should a man so godless even be permitted into our community?" Fortitude wheedled now. "Why, I hear he has two aide-de-camps with him wherever he goes. Three soldiers, three wild men, among our decent women like mother and my sisters--"

"Decent women will not be tempted by the rough soldiers of the Audenlea guard," the Blessed Elder said firmly, with looks of caution at his daughter and granddaughters. Goody, Humility, Innocence, and May clasped their hands in prayer.

"But women are creatures prone to sin," countered Fortitude. "Grandfather. I must insist you let me and some fellows trail the General. Not to watch him, of course. But to watch that none of our community become too fond of him. We must ever be watchful, on the lookout for the degradation of the weakest among us. _You_ have said that, Blessed Grandfather."

The women's prayers became louder, and now the Pastor joined them. And the Blessed Elder looked at Fortitude almost indulgently. The Blessed Elder had little interest in colonels, kings, lords, or anything outside Divine Providence. But he loved to monitor the weakest among them. He saw that as the true calling of a Sanctified Elder.

"Fortitude," he said, with some emotion. "How right you are. There can be no greater act, after all, than to prevent those likely to sin from committing to their unholy temptations."

Then he noticed he had finished his beer, and that there was none left in the tankard. He rapped his spoon against his bowl for Arody to come refill it. Arody rose, the movement awakening all the pain in his rear and cunt and breasts, and went to get the tankard.

Fortitude reached out as Arody passed him. He snuck his hand beneath Arody's shift and painfully, cruelly, tugged the stub of Arody's cock. He twisted it, making Arody stumble and struggle not to cry out at the sudden pain. Arody's instinct was to press his tongue against his teeth, but he held back. He was right to hold back. Fortitude knew how he liked to comfort himself and, to check he had not done it, he migrated his thick fingers down to Arody's cunt. Shoved them in, as his sister had. As they all did. Arody's hole was nothing special.

"Dry," Fortitude reported, sounding almost disappointed.

"Wise boy," murmured the Elder. "Always watching for sin. As the Scriptures say we should."

-

After breakfast there was laboring to be done in the garden, sweaty and hot beneath the sun. Then morning services with the community. Then more labor. So it went every day for Arody, sometimes even Holyday, because after all he was not holy, and so there could be nothing holier but to put him to work, even on the day of rest. 

His first bout of weeding, hoeing, and digging passed without incident. He kept his mind far away and blank. His legs and arms gained another layer of garden dirt and sweat, but since tomorrow was Holyday, when he was permitted a wash, he didn't mind it. He never really did. Dirt and sweat was cleaner than blood and cum. 

Morning service was held in the great meeting house next to the Whycham homestead. Men sat in the pews on the ground floor, and women in the balconies. Arody, being a child of the devil, was not permitted inside. Instead he was tied to a post by the side door, from where he could hear the service. 

He could be of use there, too.

Today it was Goodman Hastings. He was a plump little man, and he had been caught sneaking over to nearby Riverview to drink and gamble. Blessed Elder Ornett had given him twelve lashes with a birch branch, and he had spent the week confined to his house, instructed to pray. He stood outside the side door, twisting his broad-brimmed hat and looking miserable.

"I have truly felt the weight of my sins," he said to Pastor Whycham. "Truly, good Pastor. I have heard at night the cries of those in hell, and known I deserve to join them, and the misery, Pastor, is too much to bear."

"Just so," said Pastor Whycham pompously. "If thou had been a lesser man, Goodman Hastings, we might have presumed thee destined for hellfire."

But Goodman Hastings was not a lesser man. He was wealthy -- his father had been the first Judge to condemn a witch in Divine Providence, his uncles still sent the colony money from their plantations in Rotandi, and he himself had a respectable business selling furs to the Riverview impious. His success made it clear that he was not likely to end up roasting with the devil. God would not favor a man who was _truly_ evil, after all.

"Dost thou feel thyself saved?" asked the Pastor now, interrogating the Goodman nevertheless. "Worthy to sit with thine fellows and hear the word of God?"

Goodman Hastings' florid face crumpled.

"I still want to sin," he confessed. "I do not want to want to--"

Pastor Whycham nodded understandingly.

"It may take time. But thou may stay here, with the witchling, and hear the sermon. Perhaps consider giving to the poorest among us -- Goody Whycham can help you arrange it. If thou must succumb to sin, the changeling is here to receive the bulk of it, and perhaps thou shalt loose the worst of it into him. Or, perhaps, thou shalt do what sinners cannot. Perhaps thou shalt _prove_ thyself re-sanctified by enduring his hell-touch, yet not succumbing to his wiles. That is an effective test, I have always found. Canst thou rut the beast, yet not give into him?"

Goodman Hastings' voice sounded almost hopeful.

"P-perhaps!" he said, shifting to get a look at the kneeling Arody. His small, clear blue eyes seemed to drink in the kneeling changeling, every sharp bone, every scar on the collarbones, every cropped strand of red-brown hair.

"He's almost appealing," Goodman Hastings said, wonderingly. 

"Sin always is. But it can hook and trap a man if thou lets it. So do not touch his mouth, whatever thy may do," said the Pastor firmly, and swept up the narrow wooden steps into the meetinghouse.

After that, it was difficult to focus on the sermon. Goodman Hastings didn't even wait. He sat his plump rear on the large block of stone next to Arody's post and undid his leather belt, unbuttoning his grey muslin trousers greedily. Above them, the birds of the new land hooted and called to each other softly in the green trees, and from the window came the sounds of the Blessed Elder booming out his warnings against hellfire.

"Come here," Goodman Hastings said slyly. "I have what your kind likes so much, devil-creature."

His cock was an ugly, stubby pink worm. Arody crawled to it obediently, and let Goodman Hastings pull him up and turn him around. He prodded at Arody until Arody lifted his shift to show his dirty thighs and blood-crusted behind.

"Dirty thing," chided the Goodman. "Filthy! Look at you! You'll ruin my trousers!"

He spat, a wad of his thick spittle landing on Arody's thigh.

"Clean up," instructed Goodman Hastings. "Hurry up."

As the Blessed Elder continued to boom, Arody rubbed the spit into his legs. Goodman Hastings chuckled, like this was a fine joke. 

"You're only getting _dirtier_ ," he whined, low but still capable of being heard by Arody. "I bet you like to be dirty. If I could take you home with me I'd keep you dirty all the time, little hell-trollop. I'd do such sins to you you'd feel it every night."

The Goodman was wriggling about now, though Arody wasn't facing him and couldn't see. Still, Arody heard the rustle when the Goodman's trousers were shucked down. He glanced at their feet (his mud-encrusted, thin, and small, the nails glinting that odd pearly gold they were; the Goodman's in his big, heavy shoes of fine leather) to find the Goodman had shoved even his smallclothes down to his own ankles. 

"Give me that shift," ordered the Goodman. "I'll not have you ruining my shirt."

Arody pulled it over his head obediently, exposing his chest and stomach and cunt to the cold morning air. He passed the shift back and heard the Goodman rustling it about, likely spreading it over his clean grey shirt.

"Alright, devil-tramp," whined Goodman Hastings. "Let's get it in you, then."

His fingers, strangely lovely, soft fingers, closed on Arody's bare hips and maneuvered the changeling back, lining them up. Arody sank down as directed, using his own hands to spread his cunt so the stubby, hardening cock could take root in him. 

Compared to the Blessed Elder's huge prick, it was barely an intrusion. He breathed out, parting around it easily, and began to move in time with Goodman Hastings' direction on his hips. The rub of the little worm in his loose channel didn't help with his aches, but neither did it really add to them. Arody worked himself up and down on it in time to the cadence of the Elder's roaring sermon and Goodman Hastings' little grunts, letting his mind go almost blank again.

His tits bounced, in this position. The nipples were frozen stiff, bare to the cool air and sunshine. His legs were going a bit sore from the effort of fucking himself. And he still had all his old hurts. But this wasn't so bad, not if he ignored the hissing of Goodman Hastings, _devil, slut, wicked thing, whore, perverse_ , and focused on squeezing the little worm-cock to hardness. 

He squeezed. Squeezed and squeezed. He knew his task now -- to draw out another load of cum, to get that shot into him, clear proof that the Goodman had sinned. Then Goodman Hastings would have to give, and give extravagantly. The Elders and Pastors could use some of his charity to benefit the poor of Divine Providence. _Some_ of his charity. Not too much. The poor, after all, were poor by God's will. But it could not be God's will that the meetinghouse go another year without a fresh coat of expensive white for its wooden walls. So most of the charity would probably go to that.

Not that Arody was entitled to any sort of opinion over where it went. He knew his place. It was fucking himself like this, working himself back and down, over and over, trying to tighten up as much as he could. He let his tongue hang out, too, tasting the chill air, tasting his own sweaty-salt chin. Let the little fork of it curl up. It was so sensitive that it carried a small trill of pleasure down to his cunt, which slicked up enough to make Goodman Hastings bite back a moan.

"Sinful bitch," Goodman Hastings panted. His little cock stilled, then began to pulse out Arody's sticky, viscous reward. Arody breathed out and went still himself, clenching harder than ever. Goodman Hastings' long fingers were bruising his hips as he came inside Arody's cunt, adding to the mess and filth that covered the witchling.

Of course, it was at this very moment that the horses thundered up to the meetinghouse. Two or three horses to the front entrance, accompanied by the loud sounds of men wondering if the Strikers were done with their damned devotions for the day. And one a little farther than the other horses, galloping up to the side entrance to hear the echoes of the sermon within. To see Arody shuddering, milking a man's cum, eyes wide, tits bare, and with his forked hell-tongue still tasting the air.

The red-coated soldier on the horse blinked at Arody. He was a tall young man, but slender, all angles. His skin was a decided brown, his face plain but not cruel. Only his eyes stood out. They were large and human, but impossibly dark. A very handsome black, bright despite their dark color, like the evening sky. The soldier ran a hand over his curled dark brown hair as the Goodman sputtered and shoved Arody off, making the changeling fall to the ground, away from the lead still tying him to his post. Arody nearly choked at this.

The horse before him whinnied, stepping back as if it found the scene distasteful. 

"They can't _still_ be at it," came that first soldierly voice from the front of the meeting house. "How much prayer do these people need?"

"I'd say quite a lot," said the soldier peering down at Arody. As Goodman Hastings shoved his pecker back in his trousers and muttered out red-faced apologies, the soldier swung down. He leaned over, tracing the letters carved just above Arody's bruised rear. The ones the Elders had carved into him when they’d first learned his name, and decided to brand him for what he was instead. 

The soldier had calloused hands. Not so soft as Goodman Hastings'. But gentle, all the same. 

He helped Arody up, as if Arody were not filthy.

-

There was more labor in store for him, this time in the fields beyond the homestead, after the morning's sermon. So he was not present for the Colonel's reception in the Whycham household. He was instead set to carrying bricks from Pastor Haskell’s kiln to the site where they would build a new sugar house, his arms aching from the exertion, his legs aching from the trip. He collected some more sweat and mud along the way, and his skin began to itch, as it always did when he was this badly in need of a wash. 

He did wonder why the Colonel had come.

He hadn't wondered before. Before the black-eyed soldier. He had only been vaguely grateful that something else might occupy Fortitude for the day. He still was grateful. If it wasn't for the soldiers, Fortitude might be here with him now, lashing him with the small crop to make him work faster.

But still, for once he was not far away. He was acutely aware of every painful, heavy step he took, over the field, past the horse paddock where Witch-Biter, Fortitude's stallion, whinnied as Arody passed. He was acutely aware of the sun heating up the day, of the red, sore rub of his wool shift on his bruised backside as he worked, of the sticky, crusty mess between his legs. And he was aware of what a shameful thing it was for a man outside Divine Providence, a man kind enough to touch him without harming him, to have had to behold an ugly, used-up devil as was Arody. 

He felt sick. He had to stop there, in the field, and put the bricks down, and let the nothing in his stomach heave up, vomiting out the bile into the soil before the horse paddock.

-

At around midday, after serving the second meal, he was generally led back to the rundown stone shed and given food. Or Seeded. But it seemed from Pastor Whycham's musings that there would be no Seeding just yet.

There was also no food. No one came to get Arody, not even to make him serve. Across the fields, he could see the soldiers' horses still tied outside the Whycham homestead. Colonel Tolland seemed to be occupying the whole family.

Arody's empty stomach gave a pang. 

He could not go without eating. He was hungry enough as it was, all the time. His long, sensitive tongue forever wanted food. Wanted _more_. He was a changeling, after all. If he had been permitted to be as evil as he was meant to be, he would be licking in men's souls and feasting on them, grinding them up to make demonic spells, according to the Elders. But now he could only dare to play his tongue along the back of his upper teeth, feeling each hard square white knob. The touch made him shiver. 

Because he was in the center of the field, anyone could see him. Any Goody or Goodman watching from their homes, or from the street beyond the homesteads, right there on the slope above him. 

Still, he crouched and _dared_. He took a large hank of grass, yanked it, its roots enmeshed with dirt, and shoved it in his mouth.

The taste was wonderfully terrible. Dusty, muddy, green, and intense. The grass blades let off little sparks in him, small trickles of life. His tongue didn't mind. It liked the burst of slimy mud, the long slick slide of each grass blade, the squelch of weeds his teeth reduced it all too. _Feel_ was more important than taste. Even the soggy bread and watery meal he normally received had a feel, one that set his mind buzzing with exhausted pleasure. His kind could eat anything and like it. Maggots. Mother's milk. Corpse dust. Babies.

Anything was better than nothing.

He gorged himself a bit, quickly as he could, shoveling more grass and dirt into his mouth. His stomach gurgled happily, and his cunt felt slickly tender, responding to the nice sensation of something in his mouth. He even dared to lick at the caked dirt on his hands and forearms, loving the way his forked tongue's tips traced the fine, nearly invisible hairs on his arms. Little bristles, which made his whole self tremble with happy comfort.

When he was done, he pulled himself up unsteadily, thighs sticky-wet again. He picked up the bricks he'd dropped and began lugging them to their intended place. He worked and worked until he could not, until it was past noon and time for afternoon prayers. Then he dragged himself to his post by the meeting house, attaching his collar to the chain. 

The Sanctified were already milling about the front, but here, by the side closest to the Whycham homestead, there was no one. Or nearly no one.

"We take no part in the earthly struggles of men," he could hear the Blessed Elder saying stiffly, from the direction of the homestead.

"No, Elder Whycham, but you do benefit from them," came a commanding tone that could only be Colonel Tolland. "The colony of Divine Purity fell to the Inakhti, did you know that? They too refused to house my men--"

"Those sinful scapegraces? The Lord gave them their due, then," the Blessed Elder said, sounding unimpressed. Divine Purity was far to the North -- the Northernmost and Easternmost Elect settlement in the new land, while Divine Providence was in the rolling hills of the Southern border, farther from the savage settlements, closer to the beaches where docked the ships of white mercenaries and Audenlea-bound merchant traders. So they were rather more protected. And, in any case, Divine Purity had broken with the true way of the Sanctified during the schism of the Forty Years of Challenges.

"No," said the Blessed Elder now. "We take no part in wars. We are a peaceable settlement, holy and just. We do not abide soldiering, gambling, whoring. My people will not so much as speak to your soldiers, should you dare to house yourselves in the pious homesteads of my Goodmen. You and these three may spend the night until your horse is properly shoed, but after that--"

"So that is it?" Tolland said sharply. "You will not accommodate my _other_ request?"

" _We take no part in the earthly struggles of men_ ," the Elder repeated testily. "If you wish to make camp, you may do so near the barn. Once the horse is shoed, however, you must leave."

Then he was striding around the back of the homestead, his tread firm. He swept past Arody without noting him.

Normally, a man like Goodman Hastings would return for the next sermon, more penitant, more grasping, more ready to give in to sin and so fund the Elders' newest ventures. But it seemed that the humiliation of the morning had hit the Goodman as well as Arody. He stayed away. Thus, Arody was left to kneel quietly and listen to the next sermon -- on the divine joys to be felt by the Elect when they reached heaven, not that Arody was among the Elect.

And to listen to the low rumble of conversation coming from the direction of the barn.

He had thought there would be three soldiers, from what Fortitude had said. But there were four. One had a drawling, slow, sweet sort of speech. One spoke with the lilts of Lietty, the green, misty colony across the sea, which would fall to hellfire during the Coming, owing to how its inhabitants worshipped a convocate of twelve red-garbed Popes instead of the actual Divine. The third was so commanding he had to be Colonel Tolland. 

And the last was the black-eyed soldier.

“ _Whippoorwill, whippoorwill, why heed your will_ —“ the black-eyed one was singing softly. He had a nice voice. The tune was strange, winding and unusual. It hit something in Arody and hooked him. 

"Enough. Better not to ask why. He sleeps in Adam, that one does, and should only be called sparingly,” cut in the drawling one. “In any case, there’s a way to do it. The boy, Fortitude, he offered--" 

"You have no idea what he was offering, Barnabas," said Arody's soldier.

"Think I do, Bright," was the retort. 

Arody blinked at the strange name. _Bright_. He hoped no one had introduced the handsome soldier to the Blessed Elder. The Blessed Elder did not approve of brightness, not laughter, not games, not merrymaking or revelry.

Barnabas was still speaking. "It was your idea, anyway, to trick Towaquippa--"

"It was necessary," cut in Colonel Tolland. "She'll be sure to meet us at the shore, in any case, demanding what’s owed. She isn’t the sort to forget."

"Hate this stinking place," said the lilting one. "Hate these damned Strikers--"

That was the other name for the Sanctified, for the way they solved most things with the lash.

"You would," said Arody's soldier, said _Bright_ , sounding fond. 

"Did you see the devil, then?" said Barnabas. "Working in their fields? Didn't think they had it in them to trap a devil. Thought it was only criminals, slaves, Earls, and Marquises who dared--"

"And popes," added the lilting one. 

"Surely not all your Popes keep devils, Jack," said Colonel Tolland.

"Aye, only the smart ones do," said Jack. "Bind 'em, they do, with holy water and prayer, and then set 'em on their enemies, on th'bloody cardinals who think they have it in 'em to go against the convocate, even on th’other Popes--"

"How ghoulish," Colonel Tolland said mildly. "I'm glad not to be Popish. I’d like to kill a Pope for that kind of behavior."

"Suit yourself," said Jack. "My da met the fifth Pope once, you know, and he--"

"I wasn't saying we should take the boy on his offer," drawled Barnabas, cutting in rather rudely. "I was saying we should do it ourselves. We owe a debt, boys. That's why we're really here, isn't it?”

-

After afternoon prayers, he was set to work in the barn, cleaning out stalls. He didn't mind this. Wanton, his first remonstrance, lived in the barn.

Arody would never meet the second remonstrance, the snow-white goat kid the Blessed Elder had sold to a couple in Riverview for a tidy sum. He would likely never meet the third, either, for that one had been a majestic red cow, giving impossibly sweet milk, sold to the Mayor of New Roderick, in the North. For that, the Sanctified had made enough money to fence in the garden around every homestead, though in fact only the better homesteads _had_ been fenced in, only the homesteads of the pillars of the meetinghouse: the Pastors, the Elders, the truly Elect.

But Wanton had only been a gift for Fortitude on the day he was baptized into full godliness, and so Wanton had never been sold. He was a massive, silky black hound, stupid and very sweet, and though he had hurt Arody horribly with his birth, Arody refused to hold it against him. 

Changelings could not love, and were creatures of sin, but he knew he nearly loved Wanton.

And Fortitude was still not watching him. He was still trailing, in his oily way, after the soldiers. So Pastor Whycham turned over the hourglass on the sill that was meant to remind Arody to work quickly, ordered him to muck stables, and then closed the barn door and lowered the great, heavy cross-bar to lock Arody in.

Arody ignored the hourglass. He didn't muck stables right away, but instead crawled into the hay where Wanton was sleeping and wrapped his arms around the large creature.

Wanton cracked open an eye. He whined appreciatively. His long pink tongue, a normal tongue, for Wanton was mostly a normal dog if one didn't count his enormous size and perfect hunting scent, darted out and lapped at Arody's arms. 

Arody exhaled, fully himself for a moment.

 _I named him for his mother_ , Fortitude had taunted him. But it hadn't landed, that taunt. Arody _was_ Wanton's mother, and perversely proud that the dog was linked to him. Wanton might rip apart raccoons and squirrels and otters, but unlike the Whychams and the rest of the Sanctified, he had never once hurt Arody. Now he lapped at Arody's arms, the touch so nice and raspy and sweet, and Arody, pleased, opened up his own mouth, stuck out his own tongue, and -- _plat!_ \-- simply stuck it to the nearest available patch of black fur.

Not licking. Just tasting. A taste that didn't make him wet or wanting, but did make him feel -- feel _connected_ to his child. It felt like the loyal, kind, dumb essence of Wanton was filling up his whole mouth, and once it did that it entered his mind and his sore, skinny body, and once that happened he no longer hurt. He was just a nice cloud of Wanton-taste, and he took great heaping breaths of the dog and was happy.

Fortitude said Wanton didn't have a soul. The Sanctified didn't believe any animal had a soul. But Arody knew Wanton did. He could taste the soul The way he’d tasted the flares of life in the grass. Could taste the uncomplicated niceness of it. It was lovely and smoky and sweet, and he rolled a few small pieces of it around in his mouth for a few moments before licking those pieces back into Wanton. 

Wanton gave a happy whine. His tail thumped. Arody nuzzled him, pleased right back.

So pleased he scarcely heard it when the cross-bar was lifted and barn door creaked open.

He didn't realize someone had slipped in until that someone was standing over him and Wanton, casting a shadow. It was Bright, the kind-faced soldier. Up close, his scarlet coat was much more ripped and dirty than Arody had initially realized, but Arody couldn't focus on that. He could only swallow down the hard lump of fear that took hold of him, and stare up at the soldier. 

He wasn't permitted to speak. Wasn't permitted to make any noise. But perhaps he could scratch out _please don't tell_ into the dirt. 

Perhaps -- perhaps the soldier, whose touch had been almost pleasant, who hadn't seemed all that disgusted to meet a witchling child of the devil -- would even agree not to tell.

Bright crouched down before them, graceful about bending his long legs. He rubbed Wanton's head, and Wanton's tail thumped even more madly than before. 

"That boy said you would be in here," Bright said. "I think he means to curry favor with us."

 _No,_ Arody wanted to say. _Watching you. Will get muskets and axes and kill you with his friends, if you give him an excuse_.

But of course he couldn't say it. He was forbidden to speak. 

Bright was watching his face closely.

"Oh no," he said, as if Arody _had_ spoken. "No, I assure you, whatever lie he cooked up for the benefit of his family was just that: a lie. He's itching to join up with us, flee this place and go kill savages. He's just the sort to want to do that. A bully. Isn't he?"

Now he was lifted his hand from Wanton, and was petting _Arody_. It was an odd, not unpleasant touch, stroking the burr of too-short hair on Arody's skull. Arody ducked his head, puzzled, and let it happen. Bright gave a short laugh.

"Do you like that?" he said. His calloused fingers came down, brushing Arody's ear, and cupped the changeling's sharp little jaw. One -- the thumb -- then traced Arody's lips. 

Arody couldn't help it. He let out a whine.

Bright was so close to grabbing his tongue. So close. As if he _knew_ how sensitive Arody was there, as if he knew how terrifying it was to have anyone grab hold of it. 

The first presses always felt so good. But then they'd cut it, and the pain would leave Arody seizing like a mad thing.

Now, thinking of that, he began to cry. 

"Shhhh," said Bright, blinking those oddly beautiful eyes at him. "Shhh. Don't worry. Repent-Oh-Demon, is it? That’s the name they claim they gave you when they ripped you from your mother. I suppose it explains those letters carved into your back. Dreadful. It is a dreadful name. It won’t be your real one. You must tell me what I should call you instead. Now, here, you'll like this--"

And then his fingers dipped into Arody's mouth, grabbed the slit tongue, and _stroked_.

Arody did seize up. But not with pain. With the shock of suddent pleasure, worming into his whole being and making him buck widlly. Wanton gave a startled bark, and Bright seemed to see this as his cue. He scooped Arody up with his free arm, pressing the changeling against his larger body, and dragged him away from the dog.

"Come on," he said. "Up with you. To the hayloft, shall we? I've something nice for you, my little Repent."

He didn't remove his other hand from Arody's mouth. Arody, who was curling his tongue around those fingers with such ecstatic pleasure. The callouses were firm and solid and so good. And the taste, the strange herbal taste, like something feathery and purple-grey that grew in a wood.

Bright's soul.

He shouldn't taste it. He shouldn't. It was evil. It would earn him such a beating. But he could scarcely help it. He hardly processed how Bright got him to the hayloft, only that Bright did, and then that, to lay him down in the straw where he'd been beaten earlier, Bright had to remove his hand.

Arody gave a wretched, unbidden sob.

He heard when the hourglass on the sill shattered in response. It wasn't quite sound, what Arody produced. It was curse. It was a still, evil force, a force he was forbidden to make. The devil could not speak but to cast spells and enchantments, after all. His children were no different.

But Bright didn't seem afraid. He didn't even seem surprised. He only seemed a bit amused. He kneeled and helped pull off Arody's shift again, and then undid his own rumpled red coat. He tossed both aside and then settled down next to Arody, peering down at the changeling like Arody still interested him very much.

"It's alright, dear Repent," he said gently. "But you must try to be quiet, yes? We don't want them hearing you and knowing what we're up to. Now open up, sweet."

Arody let his mouth hang open, whorish and eager. 

Bright's fingers caught hold of his tongue. That was it. That was all they did. But the touch was heady. Lovely. Arody took in big heaving breaths as his tongue writhed in Bright's grip, his whole body squirming around the wet in his cunt. He gurgled out some of his own essence in his pleasure, mounting pleasure, just so happy to have a human's touch there. 

Bright was taking him in all the while. He gazed in particular at Arody's stub of a cock, the ugly, hatchet-chopped nub that showed he'd been gelded with no care for his comfort. Bright frowned at this.

"I thought I'd seen that, before," he said quietly. "When we first rode up. But I didn't want to believe it. And I suppose your tail too?"

Arody was too far gone to even nod, still fucking up into the air. Regrettably, this made Bright let loose his tongue, to better lift up his hips and check the ruined tail-stub. Arody wept at that. He -- he wanted--

He had no notion. No one had ever held his most sensitive organ, but to cut it out. No one. 

"Ah, that's why you feel everything in your tongue," murmured Bright now. "If they'd left you whole, you would feel pleasure in all three, you know. Quite a lot of pleasure. Stroking your cock, your tail, _or_ your tongue would get you quivering like this. But all you have is the tongue, so nearly all your want and hunger gets focused there. I bet just running it over your teeth too hard gets you wet."

Arody nodded, hiccuping.

"They never do stroke it, do they?" Bright said sympathetically, letting Arody's hips rest on the straw again. "Idiots. If they did, they would have you in their palms. You! A proper little devil! But I suppose they use--" the large black eyes darted to the crops and whips hanging on nails on the wall, "--other things."

Now his calloused fingers traced the scars on Arody's thighs. On Arody's bloated little pouch of a stomach. They danced up to Arody's scarred shoulders, then down to his hands. Then Bright was bringing Arrody's fingers to Arrody's mouth.

"Stroke your tongue, then, sweetling. It's alright. I want you to feel good."

Arody nearly cried out his gratitude. He stroked his tongue, and while it wasn't as nice as Bright’s touch, it was still something. His cunt clenched in answer, clenched on nothing, while Bright undid his belt.

"Do you know how I know about your kind?" Bright said, as he undressed. "My full name is Suffer-Well-The-Whims-of-Thy-Betters. Lieutenant Suffer-Well-The-Whims-of-Thy-Betters Bright, which I'm afraid is a chore. It always was. Even in Divine Grace."

Arody let out a little squeak of suprise. Divine Grace was the Westernmost Elect colony, run by the Sanctified Elders of the Blessed, who had split from the Blessed Elders of the Sanctified during the Antipalladian Controversy of the Decade of Oft-Promised Sin. 

"There," continued Bright, "I was of course young Suffer Bright. Or worse, Well Bright." He gave a shudder. "Thank heavens for joining the army. Barnabas -- you haven't met him yet, he's the Colonel's slave -- explained that army men have the supreme privilege of dropping their first names. So now I am just Bright. But one does learn a great deal about devilry, growing up in a Divine settlement. Now. Push yourself down a bit. Like that, yes. Settle in. I have something for you, and I think you will like it."

That something was his cock, hanging out of his undone trousers. With human men, it usually was cock. But Arody had to admit this was a nice cock, cleaner-looking than Goodman Hastings', thick and brown and long, but not so thick or long as the Blessed Elder's. 

Arody spread his legs, expecting, as ever, a fuck.

"No, no," chided Bright, drawing those legs closed again with a firm hand. "That would be for me. We can do that later, if you like. While this, sweetling, is for _you_."

He had shucked off his trousers, and now he pulled himself up. Only to kneel over the witchling, his lean, muscular brown thighs on either side of Arody's head. His heavy cock dangled down, and Bright guided the tip to Arody's mouth. 

Traced his lips. The cockhead was hot and tempting, and gave off the same feather-light forest musk as Bright's soul. Arody blinked, astonished, and opened his mouth hungrily to lick it.

Oh! _Oh_. 

"I'll bet they never do this," Bright whispered, peering down at Arody with a gleam in his eye. "I'm sure they want to, sweet Repent. But they know better. They know a devil never gives perfect pleasure without taking something from it. And this _is_ among the most perfect pleasures for a man. If you were allowed to be yourself, to roam the world committing temptations, I'd bet you would willingly do it _all_ the time."

Arody couldn't moan his agreement, even though a moan rose up in him. He was too full, amazingly full. Without thinking about it, he'd surged forward to suckle the cocktip, really taste the lovely flesh. His mouth was so wonderfully filled with cock, his tongue exploring every crevice, tasting down the folds of the head and coming back to lavish the piss-slit. The weight of it was incredible, and the heady smell-taste-sense of it, that decided essence of Bright working its way down Arody's hungry throat.

But no. 

No, he could not eat a soul. Not even a little bit of it. Arody gurgled up a bit of spit on the cockhead, obedient to what was right, and so dragged the soul up again. Pasted it flat on his tongue, and then lathed it back into the tasty pole being fed to him.

Bright gently stroked his shorn hair as he did this. Gently. And ever so gently shifted his hips forward, giving Arody more.

He had to hollow his mouth, let himself drool on it. It was the only way to take it. To take more, and then more still. To get as much cock as he could, good, hard cock now. Arody was drunk on it. His cunt was horribly empty, but so drippy from the feeling of tasting cock that he didn't mind. And his mouth, his tongue, his black devil-hunger (not a soul, he didn't have a _soul_ , not a creature like him) was so sated. He sucked and sucked hungrily, happily. The sucking pleased Bright, too. The soldier was breathing in hard, and guiding Arody's head now. Making Arody bob on his cock. Choke on his cock. It was going so deep it was hard for Arody to breathe, and yet Arody didn't want to stop. He _liked_ being choked with it. 

"Here," Bright said, between the bobbing and the sucking. He reached for Arody's hands again. It took some contorting, but he managed to keep his cock in Arody's mouth while still guiding the changeling's scarred, skinny fingers to his cunt. His voice was strained as he next spoke. "Play with yourself. There's a sweetling. You can fuck yourself with me, my Repent. I don't mind in the least."

Arody did give a whine now. The black force of the noise caked the lovely cock in his mouth, reverberated around it. Bright groaned, throwing his head back, and now began to fuck Arody's skull with purpose, as if he were close. Arody gave in happily to this, frigging his cunt in time with it. Forcing in his fingers, sloppy and desperate. Pleasure was churning in him, in his sore little pussy, in his even more sore, hungry throat. And he was enveloped in Bright's soul, his verdant and incredible soul, tasting it every time Bright hit the back of his mouth and kept going. He sucked with abandon, feeling overpowered and powerful all at once, feeling perverse and divine. 

He got to drink the cum when Bright came. All of it, thick and gloopy, smelling of grey-purple, feathery lust. He came at the taste, his cunt squeezing on his fingers and loosing its own wet. He drank and drank, possessed, and mouthed after the lovely cock when Bright pulled it out of his mouth.

"There," Bright said, exhaling hard. He patted Arody's head. His large dark eyes were blown from the force of his own need.

"Did you like that?" he murmured, a bit dazedly.

In a few moments, Arody would become horrified. Would notice the cloying almond smell in the air, the smell that would earn him a vicious beating with the short crop. Would begin to fear worse, fear a painful Seeding with a bull, for his sins. Would begin to cry, wretchedly, and to shake like the pathetic, ugly devil he was. 

But for now he felt alive, and present, and extremely powerful. He traced his own happy tongue, still tasting the nice thick cum.

(The little hint of soul he had swallowed by accident. Enough soul to power quite a big spell, not that he realized that.)

"I liked it," he rasped out, without thinking.

(The spell took hold.)

-

That night, when the Blessed Elder fucked him, Arody stroked his own tongue madly.

"Sinful! Bitch!" panted the Blessed Elder, in time with his thrusts. "You'll take! The crop! Tomorrow!"

Arody didn't mind. He thought of Bright -- Lieutenant Bright, his better, whose whims he would gladly suffer -- above him. Thought of the delicious weight in his mouth. Pretended that same weight, the long brown cock of Bright, was the cock plowing him now. If it were Bright, he would not mind the pain. He breathed in happily, welcoming it. Bright. Bright, fucking him. He wanted Bright to fuck him.

Something was in him now, of Bright. Something not forced on him, but taken willingly, hungrily. Drunk down and savored. Something that showed him glimpses of -- of the _to be_.

He had always thought he would live here, in the mud, fucked and spat on and beaten. Seeded. He could not be drowned, after all, and they'd failed to successfuly weight him down with enough coals to kill him. So the alternative was simply to live like this.

But now he saw a wide, open future, and a pair of dark eyes. A man hooked to him, bound to him, for Arody was a devil and that was what happened with devils. They worked spells.

Arody smiled around his sinful fingers. Smiled into the dark.


	2. The Black Moth

On Holyday, Arody was permitted to go down to the river to wash himself, with the little sliver of soap that May-He-Destroy-the-Wicked always gave to him.

He thought the other Whychams might not know about the soap. It was May's task to watch him as he bathed, watch him and hold his lead wrapped around one firm hand so he would not run away. May was a girl, but a big strapping girl, tall and broad like the men of her family, and Arody was quite pathetic next to her. Even if he did run, she was likely to catch him and beat him for it. 

But he never did run. For if he did escape her, the village men would probably set Wanton on him and track him, and then he'd be beaten anyway. And May would be beaten for letting him escape. And he didn't want May beaten, because of the soap.

And because she mostly let him alone other than to hold his lead. She never taunted him, as Humility and Innocence and Fortitude did. She rarely spoke anything to him at all. This made her the kindest of the Whychams, for it meant she never tried to trick him into talking so she could hurt him. And she never called him a _devil_ or a _witch_ or a _slut_.

Arody liked her. 

He washed without wasting time, which he knew she preferred him to do. His mud-caked feet and calves, his arse, tail-stub, and cock-nub. His cum-and-blood spattered thighs. For the presumed crimes of breaking an hourglass and fondling himself in the hayloft, he'd been striped on his thighs and cunt, and the soap stung the cuts. His eyes watered. But he pressed on, grateful for the chance to scrub himself. The river was bitterly cold, but full today, full enough to make a little inlet for him by the oak knoll where May sat. Therefore full enough to get a good scrubbing in. He did his back as best he could, twisting to get at it, and then his stomach, breasts, and arms. His neck and face. He got at the dirt beneath his pearl-gold nails. He even dunked his head, and washed at the reddish fuzz of his hair. Until the soap was worn down to nothing, and it was just him in the freezing water. 

Normally he tried to save some, to use around midweek if he could sneak his way to a pail of water. Not today. Today he longed to be clean and presentable. 

There were four new men in Divine Providence. Colonel Thomas Miles Tolland, a very handsome older man, a man of wealth and reason, with an odd, young sort of laugh that belied his natural command. His slave, Barnabas, an attractive stripling, very dark with pale green eyes and a drawl, brought from the Colonel's plantations in Rotandi. Lieutenant Simeon Shackle, a large blond man and the Colonel's laziest aide-de-camp, curiously called ‘Jack’ by the others. 

And the last aide-de-camp. Lieutenant Suffer-Well-The-Whims-of-Thy-Betters Bright. He was a sharp-faced, plain man, as brown as maple butter, with extraordinarily lovely black eyes, so black they were like the silky dell-lilies that grew along the riverbank. 

Arody had a piece of Bright's soul lodged inside him. He'd drunk it. Been fed it. _Willingly_. 

The little soul-slice rattled around in his witchling mind, warming him up. It was a nice purple-grey, the same shade as the rest of Bright’s essence, and Arody loved it with all his heart. It made him tremble and long, want to draw it up and hold it in his mouth. Pull it out. Stuff it into his cunt. Make something more of it, curl it into a spell he could hold in his belly, hold and grow and birth out. Only he couldn't do that with it. It was such a little slip of soul, and he'd already used its spell-magic up, quite by accident.

To see flashes of the future. That was always the first spell, for a witchling. And his future, Arody could see, would stretch past Divine Providence. 

So Bright had done something for him no one else had. Bright had given him hope.

He was not used to it. He had to fight to keep it off his face, the simple joy it brought him. It would not do to look joyous, not for him. It would not even do to look present. Arody was used to going somewhere blank and far away most of the time, and the Whychams were used to seeing him slack and pathetic like that. They would notice if he was instead bouncing with hope, energized by the soul in him.

When he was done bathing, he pulled on a clean shift, stepping into it and tugging the straps over his bare arms. It billowed out, scratchy and ungainly. May tugged his lead, and then he was following her back to town. 

Breakfast had long passed, Arody serving and the Whychams and soldiers eating. It had been a stiff affair. The Blessed Elder liked total silence, but the soldiers had not been told that. They'd discussed shoeing the Colonel's horse, a rebel slave land of Veromenica, the likelihood of slave rebellion spreading to Rotandi. And Bright -- he had offered Arody some bread. 

The Whychams had been horrified. Arody knew he would be beaten later, for daring to take the offering. The bread had been good white bread, very fine, much finer than what he was allowed. The Elders had all said he was only to have the worst bread, soggy with water and a bit of meal. As tasteless and colorless a dish as Divine Providence could offer him, to keep him from really gaining anything from it.

But Bright didn't know that. Arody had heard it being stiffly explained to him as he himself was led out to the garden by Humility, to work. There, he had spent the morning laundering his three woolen sack-shifts and the many finer clothes and linens of the Whychams, using the cakey, heavy laundry lye Goody Whycham kept on the finest shelf in the pantry. It had burned up his hands and irritated his ugly, liquid-black eyes, but for once he'd scarcely noticed. He was too busy thinking of Bright's open, kind gaze as he offered Arody that bread. Too busy, too, savoring the scrap of that nice, generous soul in him. 

That was the featheriness of it. He decided that generosity, real generosity, must have that sort of flutter-feeling. The kind that wanted nothing in return, that brushed against one so gently and sweetly, and then pulled back so as to not demand any recompense.

So now he hoped May would lead him past the back of the barn, where the soldiers camped. Hoped so very badly. He wanted to see Bright again. Wanted to dart his tongue out, wickedly, and taste the air around Bright. Bright had such a strong, herbal kind of soul. Arody bet it would fill all the space around the man, tasting lusciously of kindness and lust.

But May brought him down the street, the only cobbled part of Divine Providence. Children darted forwards, shrieking, "Devil! Devil!" and aiming clods of dirt, but one grim look from May stopped them. 

Arody stopped being soul-obsessed for a single moment, just long enough to be grateful to her.

At the door, Goody Whycham asked, as she always did, "Did you wash well?"

Arody nodded. He always did. Wash well, and also nod. He could never seem to make lies work, for all that he was a child of witchcraft and sin, and in any case this wasn't something to lie about. Goody let him into the house, the _front_ of the house, the big receiving room, and set him to scrubbing the wide plank floors. 

This was not difficult work, or at least not so difficult as most of his work. It hurt his knees a bit. It made it easy for Wanton, Fortitude Whycham's dog, to come up and lick his face. But it wasn't difficult. Arody scrubbed obediently, cleaning his way across the great room, getting up to tug the heavy, simple carved wooden furniture when he needed to move it. He could hear the family praying in the back room, over their verses of scripture, and he could hear, from a bit farther away--

The soldiers. Too far to make out, but close enough that he knew it was them. Including Bright. Arody let his tongue hang out, let it crane towards the open window, beyond which lingered the rest of that sweet soul. He _craved_. He wanted to take Bright in his mouth again, Bright's wonderful, heavy cock, and suck like his life depended on it. He shook with happiness at the memory.

 _If you were allowed to be yourself, to roam the world committing temptations, I'd bet you would willingly do this all the time,_ Bright had said.

Arody had to bite back a moan at the thought. He would. He would swallow down that cock at every chance. It had felt good, felt right. Arody was a dirty devils' son, and his mouth, he now knew, needed a nice big cock in it, teaching him what kindness was.

-

It was not yet midday when he was done scrubbing. 

His arms ached. But that flutter of soul in him wrapped up the ache and whittled it down, made it bearable. Arody had worked late in the kitchen the night before, making a great Holyday meal, and now he dragged himself up and went to serve it. He was disappointed but not surprised to find that this time the soldiers had not been invited. 

He was generally dragged to his shed after the midday meal, to receive his own table scraps and eat where his tongue could cause no offense to the family. But he knew from the Blessed Elder’s still-thunderous expression that this would not be happening today. Arody had received a meal already, and would get no more. 

This was perhaps not a surprise. What was a surprise was how, when after the meal he was sent with off with Fortitude, who was to supervise Arody’s work digging a ditch in the pasture, Fortitude did not take him to the pasture at all. 

He dragged Arody the other way, past the poorer homesteads, his strong hand hooked in Arody’s neck collar. Arody stumbled and choked, trying to keep up with him. Fortitude moved with purpose, the noon sun garlanding his bright hair. At the strip of foul, muddy lot behind the abandoned homestead of Goody Dummerston, who had been hanged for witchcraft not too summers before, two young men emerged from the ramshackle structure. 

Fortitude’s friends. Tall Lamentation Hynde and pale Increase Fawcett. They had evidently been waiting, and now, from behind them all, Arody heard the slap of footsteps accompanied by giggles. He twisted fearfully in Fortitude’s grasp, and beheld Innocence and Humility scurrying down the winding dirt back road to them, eager to join the crowd of young Sanctified forming around Arody. 

Arody did not need his spell to feel that something bad was going to happen. He took in quick, fearful breaths, blinking up at Fortitude. Wanting to turn back.

Fortitude dragged him forward. 

They took him to the hanging tree, and while Innocence and Humility laughed, Fortitude forced him to his knees in the dirt. Lifted his head and made him look at the long, horrible branch Goody Dummerston had dangled from for months, while the crows had picked at her body. 

Goody Dummerston. Goody Windsor. Fear-not Ruskin, who had been twelve, and screamed for her dead mother while her father had wept. Goody Polk, and Goody Thorne as well. 

And Arody’s mother. She had been among the first found guilty of witchcraft, here in Divine Providence. They had made Arody watch as she was tortured and then hanged. Unlike Goody Dummerston, she had been then cut down and quartered, the pieces of her burnt. Arody had screamed, cracking the air, sawing off tree branches with his wild fright and rage. 

All that through pitiful grunts. He had not been able to make real noise by that point. That had been the first day they had cut out his tongue. 

They had tried hanging him, too. It hadn’t taken. But the memory flooded him and made him gasp, weak and terrified, and he began to thrash in earnest. Something hot trickled down his legs. Piss. Like an animal. 

“Look!” jeered Increase, who now joined Fortitude and Lamentation Hynde in dragging the sobbing Arody forward. Arody tried in vain to throw them off, as he was pulled through the mud to the long, low stepping stone the condemned used to climb atop the scaffold cart. 

“N-n—“ Arody tried, fear overtaking his common sense. 

“He’s trying to speak a spell!” shrieked Innocence, and then the boys dropped him and began to hit him, kicking him so hard his head rang and he learned better than to speak. He tried to curl in on himself, heaving up great silent sobs, but they pulled his limbs apart again. 

“We must work quickly!” Fortitude hissed. “Come! While we bind him, Humility, you get what we need from the kiln! Innocence, you run and get Witch-Biter!”

The knot of fear in Arody’s belly became a searing thing. He thrashed as he was lifted up and dumped onto the stone. It was a flat, oblong shape, a coffin of flint. As the girls ran off, the boys tied him to the stone like he was an offering, securing tight ropes around his limbs so that his rump was in the air. 

The Whychams’ favorite position for him. Arody, stupidly, was almost glad that they weren’t trying to hang him. It would be like Fortitude, Innocence, and Humility to try it for fun. 

But today the youth of Divine Providence had a different entertainment in mind. 

“That’s it? His cunning place?” said Increase Fawcett derisively. Arody could feel Increase’s breath on his cunt. “How ugly.”

And then the young Sanctified was forcing it open with a cold thumb, laughing, as Lamentation said, “I would never be tempted by _that_.”

Fortitude only said, low and furtive, a devious invitation: “It feels good.”

The girls could not have been gone for so long. Not so long at all. But this didn’t matter. Fortitude and his friends could be quick. There was a sort of change in the air when they decided to do it, to sneak in a fuck. Arody’s shoulders shook in his bindings when Increase’s thumb pulled out. He realized he was hearing the rustle and snick of their belts.

He couldn’t see them, but he knew Fortitude took him first. Fortitude’s cock was familiar. Arody’s battered cunt had never been any match for the huge, fat pole. Fortitude sawed into him with a grunt, reaching in deeper than even his grandfather could on the first thrust. Arody’s mouth was jarred open by the force, in a silent scream. But there was no escape. Fortitude fucked him wildly, smacking his bruised ass with each thrust until he stilled and spilled his cum inside the changeling. 

Increase went next. He was not so big as Fortitude, nor quite so vicious. Arody was slippery with the first load of cum, and his messy cunt took this fast fuck better. He stopped crying so hard, began to quietly hiccup instead, as Increase snapped his hips and rocked his skinny prick into him. 

Arody’s cunt didn’t mind it. The little fuck didn’t hurt so much. Arody felt himself starting to go wet, adding his own whorish slick to the load already dripping down his thighs. The faint almond-smell took hold. 

“Devil-bitch,” Increase panted out. “Take it. Take the sin-slime in your dirty hole.”

Arody’s well-trained body didn’t pause. He was starting to move his own hips back, feeling his mind glaze and his cunt begin to accept its place. His place. A tool for sin, an ugly hole for cum. His tongue flicked out of his mouth and in the air he tasted his own shame, hot and painful and all he was good for. The almond was so thick now he felt drenched in it. 

Increase came more loudly than Fortitude, adding his cum to Arody’s sloppy bitch-hole. Arody waved his ass a bit, feeling how it slicked and dried on his cunt lips, his inner thighs. Sticky and foul. He wished someone would put it in his mouth. He wanted to taste it. Bright had taught him how nice it was, to actually get to taste it. 

Lamentation didn’t shove in. He had a blunt-feeling cock, thicker even than Fortitude’s. He rubbed the head down Arody’s slit, teasing. Smearing himself in the slimy mess of cum and devil-wet. 

The rub felt good. Slow and teasing. Arody stupidly let out a surprised gasp, a bit too loud, making the leaves rustle. Fortitude immediately grabbed his head and slammed his face into the stone block below him.

The pain was instant. Blood erupted from his nose. Arody started to cry again, as Fortitude snarled, “No spells!”

But Arody wasn’t casting a spell. Lamentation was. He didn’t pause in rubbing his cockhead up and down Arody’s cunt-crack, swiping it across the sensitive, well-abused lips. At one or two points he dipped it in, just the head, just as a tease. Arody couldn’t help but try to fuck back to meet him. 

Lamentation must have done this before. With someone. Made someone feel good with a fuck. Arody’s pain and lust-fogged mind was sure of it. Because the burble of pleasure was starting to crest in him. Lamentation was playing into his folds almost sweetly, rubbing and rubbing, making Arody pant like a dog. 

“You shouldn’t have come in him,” Lamentation told his friends quietly. “Now we have to scoop it out.” 

This was what he was doing. Spreading the filthy cum all over Arody’s bitch-cunt with his cockhead. Poking the loosened, dirty slit open so more cum could snarl out. Soon he added his fingers, alternating them with his cock. He scooped into the messy wet, coaxing it out of Arody’s body. Each hooked finger-fuck made Arody shudder, as he was cleaned out and then filthied up. Eventually Lamentation stopped breaching him with his cock at all, but just dug in knuckle-deep, stretching Arody to a point that was past pleasure or pain. That was just the stretch. 

Arody was so fucked-stupid he didn’t immediately realize that at some point they were all doing it. Three sets of hands, wriggling into his devil-puss, sloppily forcing the cum out. He could hear the skin-slap of Lamentation rubbing himself off, felt the hot shoots of new cum when they landed on his calves and bare feet. The old cum they pulled out of him as best they could, to rub on his thighs. His cunt was made to accommodate two fingers from one boy, then three from the other. Then somehow five at once, a burning stretch that left him shaking in dumb, hungry pain. He wished someone would stick a cock in him too. Rub him off properly. He was still on the edge of need, his bitch-want not abating. 

He heard Innocence’s cry of disgust when she returned to the group. By now Arody was so far away it was hard to make out the agitated accusations of all the youth around him, blaming him for tempting them, but his mind did narrow in on the slow, familiar tread that came with Innocence. The little whinny that danced above the talk. 

He went cold. 

Witch-Biter. 

“And if your cum takes and not his?” Innocence was saying accusingly. “‘Tis what the devil wants!”

“Then ‘tis not _our_ fault!” Fortitude snapped. “Were we not tempted?”

“Makes no difference now,” said Lamentation, briskly. “For it is nearly past the noon hour. We must do it now, if at all. Bring Witch-Biter here.”

“ _I’m_ not guiding it into him!” Innocence cried, as the clip-clop of hooves came closer and Arody began to really panic. To thrash again, and to be mostly ignored as the others argued over their plan. 

“‘Course you are!” Fortitude said, and there was a slap, and a little shriek from Innocence. “Or I shall tell mother it was your idea!”

Innocence cried petulantly as the horse gave another whinny. Its shadow played over Arody, and then the stone block shook from the force of the horse coming to mount it. The hooves crashed down onto either side of his face, sparks flying where metal shoes met stone. Arody let out an unbidden, horrified scream. The hanging tree swayed dangerous from the force of it. 

“Quickly!” shouted Fortitude. “He is casting another spell!”

Arody thought that one of the boys must be holding the horse‘s lead, another steadying it as it whinnied and whined. Innocence must be the one lifting that huge, slimy, cold cockhead up to him. Arody was shrieking with abandon now, trying to get away, but there was nowhere to go. The big prick breached him, forced right up into his guts. 

It was too much even for his loose cunt. He could feel that cock splitting him open. The slick and mess did little to make it bearable. His entire cunt was pain. He didn’t know anything but the horse’s pole in his dirty, sloppy hole. 

Somehow Innocence got enough in on the first thrust that it distended Arody’s belly. His whole body stretched to give the horse its fuck. It was like all of him, from cunt-lips to belly, was just a hole to be wrung out around that massive cock. The cum already inside him sprayed out messily as the breath was knocked from his lungs. The enormous cockhead hit the head of his womb and kept going, turned Arody into nothing but a sleeve for that cock. 

And then Witch-Biter realized what was happening. The whinnies didn’t stop, but now the horse didn’t need Innocence. 

It fucked him. As the boys jeered, the huge beast fell into an ungainly rhythm, sliding its enormous meat in and out, humping the little devil-whore beneath it. Arody felt like he was being punched in the cunt. His hole stretched to breaking, fucked open by each violent thrust. His entire body was a mass of pain. He jerked stupidly on the horse-cock, taking it deep and then deeper. His tongue lolled out, writhing like a snake as he wailed. Lightning split the sky despite the brightness of the day, but Arody scarcely noticed. He couldn’t process the pain. It was too much. 

His cunt was still wet. 

“He likes it,” he distantly heard a satisfied Lamentation say. “The devil _likes_ it.”

Arody felt hot shame grab hold of him. He liked horse-cock. Liked being fucked so violently that each thrust drove his sore breasts into the stone and made him look pregnant. When the huge cock rubbed into the ruined head of his womb, it broke something in him. He shuddered and grunted like a sow in heat. His cunt erupted, squirting out more almond-scented wet in total pleasure-pain. He was coming, was nothing more than Witch-biter’s bitch slave. 

And the horse did not let up. He was still whinnying, fucking with purpose. Determined to seed the little cunt he was destroying. Arody trembled as he realized what was happening. He could distantly hear Fortitude reading out from the Scripture book he always kept in his pocket. The prayer to catch and bind a devil, this devil, little Arrow-Dee, and to bend the devil-body to his will. 

Arody wanted to die. 

It felt like he might. Past his own pleasure, now there was nothing but violent pain. He could scarcely breathe with how hard the horse fucked him. His cunt hurt so much. His whole body did, but especially his cunt. And the shame hurt. He had come on a horse’s cock. Like the livestock he was. He had come while his womb opened up to take a horse-breeding. 

Inside him, there was still that little scrap of kind soul. He was terrified to lose it. He was too dirty and foul to possess it, but he was terrified to lose it. He wrapped his essence around it, trying to protect it, so it wouldn’t feel this. 

When the horse came, he was pumped full of so much cum he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His stomach swelled painfully, the little gut so rounded it looked like he might pop. His face was a mass of snot and blood, and his cunt somehow worse. When the horse cock slid out he could feel himself gaping wide open, cum pouring out, too much cum for his body to hold. 

“Quickly, Humility!” cried Fortitude. 

At some point during the fuck, Humility had returned, with a heavy bucket of live coals. And the tongs. The knife. The brand. 

Arody felt the last pieces of him break. When the horse was pulled off, they forced open his mouth. Pulled out his tongue. 

He was so stupid. He hadn’t known real pain before. This was real pain. He seized and pissed himself again, thrashing and helpless, as Fortitude cut his tongue out and pressed the brand to the stub. 

“Now he can say no spells as the seed takes,” Humility said with satisfaction. 

They stuck the hot tongs in his cunt to plug him up, for he was a devil and could take the hellfire burn. Then they untied him, only to wind the ropes around his breasts, making them into painful purple mounds. He was tied to the hanging branch by his ankles and tits, his head and torso dangling down a bit. So the cum could drip into him instead of out. Quicken inside him. Breed him properly. 

He was scarcely conscious by then. He thought he heard Fortitude say, with satisfaction, “Now I should be the one to tell the Colonel.” He would not have believed it, except that, after he passed out, he woke again and it was night, and the lieutenant was cutting him down. 

His lieutenant. Bright. 

The soldier’s brown hands were gentle, but Arody was a mass of bruises. Every touch made him cry out. Every cry was an aborted thing. His tongue was still a ruined stub. 

Behind Bright’s worried face he could see two of the others. Barnabas and Jack. Barnabas looked curiously blank, his eyes gleaming with some banked emotion. And the big blond aide-de-camp was shaking his head. 

“Poor little devil,” he kept saying mournfully. “The sorriest little devil I’ve ever met.”

-

They must have taken him down to the river, washed him, and brought him back to the homestead. 

Arody couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t conscious for most of it. He fogged in and out, gulping for breath between his tears, as if even without his reason he still couldn’t help but cry. He felt Bright’s calloused hands carefully cleaning the foul spend from his thighs, glimpsed the warm wool of the red coat when it was wrapped around him. He heard faint snatches of song, _Whippoorwill, Whippoorwill_ and then behind his closed-tight eyelids there was a sort of sparking light. A tremble in the air. He dug himself deeper into Bright’s arms, afraid. Now there were voices, like the men were having an argument. 

“If you want to be my men, you will trust in my plan!” one of them snarled, and it wasn’t drawling Barnabas or lilting Jack, and it wasn’t Bright. It was the Colonel. The Colonel who had ordered Fortitude to breed him with a horse. The Colonel who Bright also answered to. Arody wept openly into the soldier’s shoulder. 

-

It seemed there was more wrong with the Colonel’s horse than a mere shoeing could fix. It seemed the Colonel wanted a replacement. Stronger, faster. A hell-horse, of the kind only a changeling could grow. 

Arody would have thought the Blessed Elder might be angry enough to force the soldiers from the town. But — perhaps because a sort of roiling storm had come in that same day, painting the skies with lightning and cracking thunder over the fields — the Blessed Elder did no such thing. The soldiers stayed in residence. 

But Fortitude was punished. Twelve lashes, over his clothes, and he was to be confined to his room for a month. For aiding and abetting him, Innocence, Humility, and poor May who had done nothing, but was considered guilty by proxy, were each given thirty lashes bare. Arody heard their screams from his place in the shed, where he crouched in the straw and dirt. 

His tongue had grown back within the first two days, when he had been at his most delirious. Unfortunately, his stomach grew with it. It was a certain, steady swelling, throbbing horribly. Cramps wracked him, sweat broke out across his limbs as he cradled the round pain of his belly. Inside him, he could feel the new life expanding, kicking its way to being. His not-soul, his black-smoke devil-essence, felt exhausted and shredded to pieces, feathery as Bright’s soul, as the new life drew from him. He had to hide the soul-piece deep down to keep it from being devoured as well. Had to distract the hell-colt with his own being, letting it feast on him, gnaw and gnaw and gnaw as it grew. 

His tongue lolled out of his mouth, searching for anything to sustain him. In the corners of the shed he found grubs and snails. Their life essence was weak, slippery, and wet, but he ate them anyway. Aside from that, he could do nothing but cramp and hurt. He was feverish and weak. 

He was fed real food at intervals, the girls or Goody pushing bowls into his little hovel that he fell upon, desperate for food. But to so much as move pained him, because of the way his stomach had so rapidly grown to be heavy, hurting, and hot. The skin was so tight that discomfort kept him from really sleeping, and even the slightest shift in position would make it feel tighter still. He wept freely, pissed where he sat, and could scarcely drag himself to the chamberpot to relieve himself in other ways. 

Aside from food, he was mostly ignored. He was never taken out after a Seeding. The Elders didn’t want the good townsfolk seeing the ugly perversion of a devil brewing its young. But, generally, he was still fucked. The Whycham men liked fucking him while he was pregnant. He was too weak and sorry to seem fearsome to them. If he wailed, the force of it would be weak, all his energy going to growing the child in him. Once, while he’d been heavy with his goat kid, Pastor Whycham had even dared to poke at his hanging-low tongue, the tongue he regularly cautioned Goodmen to beware of, to watch the way Arody writhed and his back arched, and his cunt clenched and came in response. 

But now no one came. The Blessed Elder had deduced that Fortitude wanted to curry favor with the soldiers, so he could run away, abandon the path of the Sanctified, and join the army. Fortitude had not denied this. Arody had heard Goody Whycham’s wails of penitent upset over her favorite child’s wickedness even in the shed, even while he himself had been half-delirious. And so now it seemed that the older men were taking turns locking themselves in Fortitude’s room, to watch him and pray over him, desperate to save his soul. 

So they forgot to come rape Arody. 

He drifted in and out, feeling his stomach grow steadily. Harden more and more. The bulge was obscene after a mere three days, hanging low beneath his breasts. These grew too. Milk dripped out and in his hunger he contorted himself to suck at his own nipples. The taste was ashen and strange, tinged with smoke. It didn’t sustain him. He scrabbled in the dirt, desperate for more grubs. For something alive. He was so weak, so hungry, and he didn’t want to devour Bright’s soul. That was the only piece of him that did not hurt. 

-

On the fourth night, he caught a snatch of dream. Memory. It was a sort of horrible comfort. He was so weak he forgot what had happened for a moment. Dazed, he clutched his painful belly and managed to delude himself into thinking this wasn’t from a horse-fuck. 

It was just an accidental breeding. Those happened every few months, with the way he was fucked. The spend in him would take, almost as if he were a human woman and not a devil. Eventually his belly would pouch out more than usual, and someone would notice. 

Then, at the twilight hour, the Elder and Pastor Whycham would come with the tongs. Heated, of course. And he would be made to take them in his womb, as the clump inside him — no soul yet; strange, how unlike his too-fast witch babies the human young never really had time to form into anything truly alive — was pulled out. 

It was torture. But it was better than carrying a remonstrance. He managed to make himself believe that soon the tongs would be happening, soon someone would come and stop the thing in his stomach from growing at his expense. He made himself quiet his weakened whimpering. Tried to be good. If he was good, they would come and pull it out of him. 

Someone came. 

The rough wood door of the shed opened out with a creak. Two forms were silhouetted there, in the faint moonlight. One slender, one very large. Arody looked up pleadingly, his breaths rattling out of him from pain. 

But it wasn’t the Elder, or Pastor Whycham. It was Bright. Bright and Simon Shackle, who they all called Jack. The latter approached the chain tying Arody to the wall. Though he carried nothing in his hands, there was a clang and the chain was loosed. Arody was lifted up into Bright’s arms. He blinked, confused and hurting. The brown-skinned soldier was not rough with him, but Arody hurt so badly it almost didn’t matter. 

“Can you be quiet, sweetling?” Bright whispered. “We have been watching to see if it was safe to come see you. It seems they are all wrapped up in the boy. But they may be alerted if you make a sound.”

Arody let his dry, shriveled tongue loll out. All he ever did was be quiet. Of course he could be quiet now. Bright seemed to take this as agreement and straightened up, Arody still in his arms. 

They carried Arody down to the riverbank again. Arody became a bit more sensible as they started to wash him. Bright rolled up his sleeves and let water splash his dingy red coat. The soap he used was coarser than May’s, but it got the sweat and piss and grime off. Jack held Arody in place so he didn’t sink beneath the water. Arody himself was useless at keeping upright. His legs buckled every time they tried to make him stand. 

Bright was very careful about soaping up his belly. The belly that carried the Colonel’s new steed. Arody would have started crying, if he hadn’t been crying already. 

They dried him with a spare bit of cloth they’d brought and spread him on Jack’s coat — much more patched and ruined than even Bright’s coat, and not nearly big enough for the large man, but more than large enough to swaddle Arody. 

Bright caressed his hair, which was longer now, curling about his ears, and hummed to him. Jack darted away and then came back with something. 

“Give ‘im this. He’ll be bloody hungry,” said the big man. 

Bright pressed it at once to Arody’s mouth. Arody opened wide, desperate, and was surprised to find a posy of dell-flowers pressed in. He moaned, grateful. The flowers had a tangy, vivid sort of essence. Their life leached into him as he chewed, and he was relieved and so thankful. 

Jack darted away again, then came back with a fistful of ivy. Bright fed it to him as before, pulling Arody up to rest on his lap, bringing the leaves to Arody’s mouth as if he were feeding an infant. 

They did this for some time. Arody was fed handfuls of acorns, bark. Wriggling red worms and perfectly normal radishes scrounged from some Goodman’s garden. Bunches of herbs, likely from the same, and even a little live field mouse, which Bright did not hesitate to press into his shaking hands so the devil-changeling could devour it whole. He found his tongue snaked around its neck on instinct, snapping the tip of the spine in two and killing the creature painlessly. Its blue-tinged essence gave him the most strength yet, sucked into him as he chewed its bones and gristle and fur, swallowed it all down hungrily. 

Bright sent Jack to the riverbank with a handkerchief, so they could mop up the smears of blood on Arody’s mouth. Arody’s belly still hurt, but now he was more alert. He trembled a bit in the dark-haired soldier’s arms. Confused. 

“It’s perfectly alright, sweetheart,” Bright was saying. Had been saying, over and over. Whispering comforts as he drew Arody close and played with his hair. 

“Better?” he asked, once Arody’s mouth had been wiped clean. 

Arody nodded. 

“Good,” Bright said gently. “Now, my sweet Repent. Do you want my cock in your mouth again? Wouldn’t that be nice? Jack wants to have a look at your cunt to see how the babe is coming along. But you can have a suckle while he works, if you like.”

Arody did like. His whole body shuddered with want and with shame, but he didn’t fight as the men spread him out atop Jack’s coat. He obediently spread his legs. Bright pulled off his trousers and coat and and small clothes and climbed over him in his shirt, crouching as before so that he could guide his cockhead to Arody’s lips. 

Arody lunged for it. He opened as wide as he could, eager to taste the cock. It was a bit sweaty, the meat heavy on his tongue. It hardened as he sucked at it, small strings of pre-cum dribbling onto his gums. He moaned, helpless, wanting more. The firm flesh fucked up and down his tastebuds as Bright began to rock into his mouth. 

Arody opened up more. Stretched wide, though his jaw was aching in seconds. He wanted more cock in his mouth. He wanted this cock to own him. The musky, near-salty smell of Bright’s privates filled his nose, as the big prick began to choke him. In response, Arody’s cunt went slick. He slobbered on the cock hungrily. His mouth could taste the whole of Bright’s soul again, that nice herbal strength, as Bright cradled his skull and set a faster pace than before. Fucking Arody’s mouth in earnest, making him drool on cockmeat, feel it in his throat. 

This made it easier for Jack to work on his slippery cunt. 

It still gaped obscenely from the horse-fucking. Arody hardly felt the big man’s hand until Jack had nearly a whole fist in him. The blond soldier made soothing noises that were scarcely audible over the messy slap of Bright fucking his mouth, Arody taking cock to the root. 

“Oh, you’ve carried more than a few, little witchling,” crooned Jack, lilting voice sounding almost playful. “Aye, you’re a proper mother. Good for you. No wonder you’re so nice and loose, my devil-puss. Look how you give! And so good and wet for me.”

“His tongue, Jack,” Bright panted, as he fucked Arody’s mouth. His balls, hot and taut, hit Arody’s chin. Arody sucked him until he was full of Bright’s soul, and then he sucked some more, cock-dazed and desperate. 

“Aye, that will be where he feels his demon thirst. Fucking bastards have cut off so much of him, it’s a wonder he can feel that. Poor little blighter. I’ve never seen one in this state. Oh, here it is—“

Jack was in him so deep now, his forearm prying Arody open, that his thumb caught on the bruised, puffy head of Arody’s womb. He pushed in carefully. Arody whined. He felt it when Jack pressed gently on his womb walls from within, the man’s free hand then coming to prod at his distended stomach from the outside. 

“He’ll birth with no problems, the poor little devil,” Jack announced. “Carrying it well, and stretching as he should for it. The wombhead is battered, aye, but it gives to the touch. Should open up properly, for the babe to force its way out.”

“But will it hurt him?” Bright panted out. He seemed to have difficulty speaking. Perhaps this was because Arody couldn’t help but to lovingly swirl his tongue around the cock fucking his mouth. It tasted so good, Bright’s soul. He didn’t want to devour it, not really, so he held it in his mouth and sucked away little flakes of it. His throat burned, and he couldn’t breathe, but it didn’t matter. He got to taste this man’s soul and his cock, and that was all he wanted. 

“‘Course it will hurt,” Jack was saying, with a snort. “You can’t think ‘twill be easy for a little witchling like this to push out a hell horse.”

Bright gave a curse. 

“Can we do anything? He’s suffered enough, Jack!”

“Let him have your whole soul,” Jack said wryly. “Looks like he might take it anyway.”

Arody whined around the cock in his throat. 

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He was not that evil. He didn’t want to be. He squeezed his eyes shut in shame and tried to lathe back what he’d taken, suck it into the cock that was hot and heavy on his tongue. 

Bright’s next curse was almost frustrated, for all that he was coming down Arody’s throat. His cum filled up the changeling’s mouth, painting his gums with viscous white. Arody gurgled and drooled, overcome by the taste. 

“He won’t,” Bright bit out. “Not this one. I wouldn’t let him have my whole soul, but even if I did. He would have tried to eat me whole on that first day, if he was the greedy sort. No, Jack, this one’s not like our Will. This one’s sweet, Jack. He’s a good little devil.”

“Ah,” Jack said. When he pulled his hand out, Arody’s cunt walls fluttered, sensitive. Arody wriggled, still trying to suck cock, even as he had to choke down the flood of cum in his mouth. Now his cunt felt so empty. 

“That must be why you’re in this state, little witchling,” Jack said. “Poor thing. We’ll have to help you grow some spine, my little devil-puss.”

-

After this, the soldiers came punctually for the next three nights. 

They seemed to be watching the house, ensuring the Whychams were preoccupied with Fortitude. Then Bright and Jack would collect Arody and repeat the bathing. The feeding. The holding, as if Arody were something special, something Bright wanted to be careful with. Arody still wept when touched, but it was with shamed pleasure. He had collected a little more of Bright’s soul to warm and strengthen himself, during that second cocksucking. So he didn’t deserve this kindness. 

But it was given to him anyway. And Bright seemed to know that Arody had taken a bit more of him. He would hold Arody close as he fed him wild mushrooms, sheaths of corn leaf, and would say, “You haven’t cast a spell with it yet, have you, Sweetling? That’s good. Keep it well until you know how to use it.”

Arody’s first spell was rather pathetic. He could see no more of the future than the barest bit. Just a haze of world beyond Divine Providence, and these black eyes looking at him. Nothing more. He wasn’t certain it would be worth it to sin again with more spellcasting, not if this was all it brought him. 

On the second night, no one fed him any cock, but Bright did lay him down and put his own mouth to Arody’s cunt. No one had ever done this before. Bright lapped at the swollen, ugly flaps like they were worth attending to. The sensitive skin tingled where his tongue touched it, and Arody squirmed, crying out. His voice loosed another bolt of lightning across the sky, and it began to rain in sheets. Jack cursed, but Bright didn’t stop. He licked down Arody’s slit and wriggled his tongue inside. Arody wound his scarred thighs around Bright’s head. Explosions were going off inside him. The pleasure drowned out the ache of his ever-swelling belly. He shrieked like a wanton trollop, coming from Bright’s tongue, almond-sweetness poisoning the air. 

Then, the next night, he got to taste Jack’s cock. 

It was thick, and Jack’s soul was a strange, glowing tang. Hot and spicy. 

“You’ve taken quite enough of Bright, devil-puss,” the big man grunted, as Arody kneeled before him and bobbed obediently, the way he was learning men liked. “Try me, now. That’s it. Not all of it. I won’t let you take it all, my witch-tot. But you can have a little sliver, for the strength it brings.”

Jack’s soul was soft and feathery too. It spooled down gently into Arody, its spicy touch setting his whole body alight. Once more he came just from the act of sucking, gushing onto the grass. Bright stood just behind him all the while, hand gently guiding his head, crooning endearments as though he found the sight of Arody desperately sucking cock to be almost pretty. 

“Suck it down, sweetling. That’s it. You were made for this, my little love. Does it make you feel good? That’s it. By now I bet you want a fuck, sweetheart. I bet you’re ready to beg for it.”

Arody was. When the soldiers returned him to his shed, chaining him to the wall again, he fucked his own fingers. His cunt squelched sloppily, his lust-smell fogged up the dirty hovel. Inside him, the hell-horse shifted horribly, and even the pain was good. Arody stuck his tongue out and humped his own hand, a bitch overcome. 

On the fourth night, they both fucked him. 

Arody was by then in ecstasy. The soldiers put him on his hands and knees, so his now-massive belly hung below him. It shook as he was plowed, as they traded off on his mouth and cunt. First Jack stoppered up his mouth, fucking so deep there that Arody’s spasmed, as Bright fucked slow and steady into his cunt. Arody quivered around both cocks, wet leaking from his mouth and hole, the dirty sounds and smell of sex coating him. He was drunk on the fucking, hardly sensible, when Bright came in him and the men switched. He mouthed after Jack’s cock when it pulled out of his mouth, a line of drool dangling from his lips to the tip. His whine flattened the grass by the riverbank, as Jack went around to his rear. 

Jack’s cock pushed into his messy, empty cunt with no resistance. 

“Tighten up for him, sweet. Like you did for me,” Bright instructed, as he came to the front and fed Arody his cock. 

It tasted dirty, almond-sweet, and wonderful. This was what Arody’s own juices tasted like. Arody hummed happily and obeyed the order given to him, clenching his loose puss to milk Jack better. 

The hell horse kicked painfully, but he was too far gone to mind it. In just four nights, Arody had become a true witch-slut. 

-

By the next morn it was Holyday again, and now the family remembered he existed. 

He was whipped. It was possible Pastor Whycham wasn’t even sure what he was whipping Arody for, for Fortitude’s salvation consumed the whole family, and the Pastor mumbled distractedly about it as he laid into Arody. Arody was of course blamed for leading Fortitude astray, but as he was also blamed for fucking a horse, growing an unsanctioned remonstrance in his devil-womb, letting his cunt get hideously loose, letting his milk go sour and tangy, and being the child of a witch, it was hard to tell just which of these sins, precisely, merited the fifty whip-lashes he received, right on his cunt. 

He was still bleeding when they tied him up next to the post outside the meetinghouse, during services. This was unusual, for his perverse, enormous belly was still something the Elders did not want seen by the townsfolk. It was both too ugly and too tempting. But this week Goodman Deekes, who was wealthier even than Goodman Hastings, had been caught owning silken fripperies. So the Elders had a chance to make a great deal of money from the man’s temptation. 

Goodman Deekes had an ugly cock. Knobbly, and bent at the tip. Foul-smelling. Beneath the head there curdled ugly wads of dick-cheese. His balls were large oblong sacks of pale, almost grey flesh, and his pubic hair looked coarse and yellow, surely unwashed. 

Arody didn’t want that in his raw, sensitive cunt. He’d been infected before, from cocks like that. It wasn’t pleasant. 

And by now he’d learned what it was to truly want a fuck. So his brain was lit with sinful defiance, and instead of fucking himself the way he had with Goodman Hastings, he crawled with purpose between the startled Deekes’ legs. 

Not to suck. No, that would be too obvious. And Pastor Whycham had warned Deekes away from touching Arody’s spellcasting tongue. 

But Arody’s breasts were a tempting sight no one had thought to warn for. Swollen, pillowy, with long nipples that were still firm from the morning’s milking. As the Goodman gave a surprised squawk, Arody kneeled between his legs and wrapped the hideous cock in his tits, making a warm little tunnel. With a few soft exhales, he began to move his tits up and down the ugly pole. The Goodman threw back his head. Though they were in broad daylight and the sounds of the sermon surrounded them, Goodman Deekes still hissed out a curse no Goodman should know. 

“Damn you, sin-whore! Yes! Like that!”

His greedy hands grabbed Arody’s tits, squeezing them close together, making the soft pillow of flesh bulge around his ugly meat. He rutted into Arody’s chest, his unwashed smell assaulting the changeling. Arody bore it. Milk leaked from his nipples onto the Goodman’s smallclothes, but Goodman Deekes hardly seemed to notice. His surprise had given way to true lust. His hands mauled Arody’s big tits with gusto, as his pre-cum slicked up the fat flesh. His thrusts made a low wet slap as Arody pleasured him, working his tits up and down the ugly prick. 

The cockhead peeked up between his breasts. It was an angry, ugly red color. Arody focused on making the titfuck good, but watched the Goodman from beneath his lashes. Goodman Deekes was still biting back curses. He was completely out of his head, as Arody was with the soldiers. Unthinking and defenseless. 

Arody slipped his forked tongue from his mouth, that long, serpentine appendage. He let the tip brush the dirty cockhead. Just a brush. Just while the Goodman was occupied. 

The Goodman’s soul slapped into it. Arody almost lost his rhythm. He had thought it would be nice, filling. The way the other human souls were. But it tasted horrible. It was a putrid, toilet taste, the taste of greed and hypocrisy. This was not a pure soul. It was tainted. Arody gagged, drawing his tongue back in horror. 

“Oh no,” snarled the Goodman. “Thou shalt finish thy work properly, witch-cunt!”

And his gnarled, cold hands forced Arody’s head down. Arody, shocked, was made to gag on the filthy cockhead. He dropped his hands from his tits in surprise, not expecting one of the Sanctified to pursue this sinful kind of cocksucking, but Goodman Deekes did. He choked Arody just as Bright had, but now Arody didn’t enjoy it as much. His tongue was still sensitive enough to make it impossible for him not to go wet at the friction. But the horrible, evil soul of this man was now pressing in on him, almost demanding to be devoured. Arody’s stomach heaved. The other souls had been soft and good, carefully fed to him in a controlled way, he now realized. But this one did not hold back, as if Goodman Deekes secretly wanted to give himself to evil. The filthy taste made Arody thrash and try to get away. 

“None of that!” hissed the Goodman. His knobbly hands closed on Arody’s throat, and he squeezed. Arody gasped. Spots danced before his eyes. He couldn’t breathe and that gave the soul the chance to hit the back of his throat, just as the dirty cock did. Arody tasted bile and scrabbled weakly at the Goodman’s thighs. He didn’t want such a nasty soul in him. He didn’t. 

He thought he would have to take it anyway. It was swelling up, coating him in a brown-red funk, like bloody waste. He flopped about pathetically, helpless to resist it. 

Then a shadow came up behind the Goodman. 

Barnabas the slave. He lifted a slender black hand — “ _—poor will. Poor will_ — Arody thought he heard the slave say, but he could not have heard it, for Barnabas’ lips didn’t move, and when he hit the Goodman in the back of the skull, it was like he had clapped the man with an iron mallet. Goodman Deekes swayed, and his hands loosed. He passed out cold. 

Arody spat out the dirty soul at once, heaving, vomiting into the dirt. By the time he looked up again, Barnabas was gone, having dragged the unconscious body of the Goodman away. 

-

Goodman Deekes must have come to in his home, or some other place which roused no suspicion. For when Arody was whipped that night, it was only for failing to tempt the man into giving monetary repentance. Not for doing away with him, killing him, or devouring him, which surely would have been the charge had the Goodman gone missing entirely. 

By now, Arody was able to stay alert and watchful of nights, waiting for his beloved soldiers to appear. His belly was bigger than ever, and very tight and painful, but he would make himself breathe out carefully, calming himself. Waiting. Soon the pain would go. Soon he would be bathed, fed, and fucked past the point of hurt. He would sit with his bare bottom in the dirt, big stomach large enough to brush the floor between his spread legs, and patiently suckle his tits until his lovers should appear. 

This time it wasn’t just Bright and Jack. This time, Barnabas also came to the door of Arody’s hovel. 

He was the youngest of the four, Arody thought, and the handsomest. He had a chiseled face, and his green eyes were long-lashed and striking. He stayed back a bit as Jack and Bright washed and fed the changeling (strawberries, snails, and a small possum today), but came forward when this bit tending was done. 

Arody was completely unafraid. He lay quietly, patiently in the grass, golden nails gently scraping his painful belly in order to try and calm the bucking child inside him. Legs spread eagerly. 

He was surprised when Barnabas moved first. He had long-fingered, magnificent dark hands. One covered Arody’s smaller hand, helping it rub circles into his belly. The other found the mass of scars that was his cock-stub. 

“Fuck,” drawled the slave, with feeling. “ _Fuck_.”

“I told you,” Bright said at once, from above Arody’s head. “This one has suffered enough.”

Barnabas blinked, but didn’t say a word in opposition. He leaned down, so that his forehead touched Arody’s. His breath was mint-sweet and warm, and made Arody shiver. 

“Does it hurt you?” he asked. His voice was as mournful as Jack’s had been, when Jack had checked Arody’s womb. He sounded regretful, too. Guilty. 

Arody never spoke, not really. But he was also never petted like he had been this week. Never cuddled and washed and fed. Even now, his whole spine quivered in time to the careful way Barnabas stroked his taut belly. 

“It doesn’t hurt so much,” he managed, “as the last one did, Goodman Barnabas.”

His voice was rusty, raspy as it had been when he’d spoken to Bright. It charged up the air, and he saw, behind Barnabas, Jack’s face going slack with shock. 

“He does speak!” cried the big blond man. 

Bright also made an odd noise, but Barnabas hadn’t spent enough time with Arody, perhaps, to register how odd it was for the changeling to volunteer real words. 

Barnabas leaned in. He pressed his full, handsome lips to Arody’s thin ones, the touch gentle. Arody arched his back, his tongue slipping out to meet Barnabas’. This was kissing. Someone was kissing him. No one had ever done this before. Arody moaned and was stupidly surprised at how he could taste Barnabas this way, breathe in a little bit of soul without anything so rough as a cock in his mouth. 

It was just gently pressing on him. Barnabas lathed his tongue. Arody chased the kiss, surging up hungrily, wanting more. More! A new soul, delicious and good!

Barnabas pulled back. His soul receded, too. It was cool, violet-blue, and sweet as anything. Arody whimpered as Barnabas rapped him gently on the nose. 

“Nuh-uh, pup,” said the handsome man. “None of that, not ‘til I give you permission.”

“Sorry,” Arody rasped out, instantly ashamed. “S-sorry, Goodman Barnabas.”

Barnabas had a striking smile. 

“Damn. You were right, Bright. He is a polite little devil. Nothing like the other one.”

He leaned in again and kissed Arody once more, and Arody melted happily beneath him. Barnabas’ hand traced down over the big bump of his belly to his cunt, and began to rub him. Arody trembled happily, fucking up into his fingers. 

He heard the other two moving about. One settled between his legs — Jack, maybe. His thighs were lifted, to give the big man better purchase. There was a rustle, and then that wonderful cock was pressing into Arody, slow and sure. Arody squeezed down on it. Barnabas was still rubbing his outer lips, and it all felt so good. Arody wished he could stay like this, being fucked by these men forever. He could feel the little pieces of soul in him peeking up, flooding him brightly, set alight by the happy daze of being fucked and played with. 

“Sweetheart,” he heard Bright say patiently. 

Arody’s eyes snapped open. Barnabas was still gently kissing him, but now he was grinning into the kiss. He pulled back, laughing a little at Arody’s miserable, abandoned pout. Bright, meanwhile, leaned over Arody’s other side, cock out. He was stroking it slowly with one hand, the other hand playing with Arody’s now-curling hair. 

“You ever taken three, honey?” Barnabas said lightly. 

Arody shook his head. 

“But,” he managed to rasp out. “I could.”

He could. He’d taken a horse. And the response made all the men laugh. Barnabas gently palmed a tit, and said, “What do you want, Bright? How d’you think we ought to do this?”

Bright seemed to consider this for a moment, his plain face intent. 

“Do you trust me, Sweetling?” he asked Arody. 

Arody nodded at once. Now that he knew Bright, Jack, and Barnabas seemed able to offer him or deny him their souls at will, and that Bright must have been deliberately feeding him delicious little slivers to warm him and aid him, he wasn’t sure there was anyone in the world he trusted more. 

Bright’s smile was smaller and more private-seeming than Barnabas’, but still very handsome. 

“Good, my little one. Let’s turn you over then, on hands and knees.”

Jack pulled out of his cunt with a groan, and then all three men were arranging him as Bright specified. By now the hell-horse had grown so big that Arody’s belly was pressing into the dirt in this position. His tits dangled below him, firm and full, and Barnabas went back to caressing them, making him shiver a bit. 

“I taught you to suck cock, my dear witchling,” Bright said carefully, positioning himself behind Arody. “Yes? No one had ever fed you their cock before.”

Arody nodded obediently. 

“Waste of a fine mouth,” Jack said, with a wink, and Arody blushed as Barnabas let out a peal of laughter. 

Bright’s voice was amused as he continued. 

“Would you like to learn more new things, my pet? Do you trust me enough for that?”

“Oh, yes!” Arody cried out, and the men laughed again, easy and warm. Now Jack settled down bare-arsed in the grass to kiss him, as Barnabas fondled Arody’s nipples and made him squirm with delight. He felt attended to. Almost worshipped. He kissed Jack hungrily, chasing the hot soul of the man until Jack pulled back, and he and Barnabas took turns flicking his nose to correct him. 

“Cutie,” Barnabas said, with a grin. “That’s it. We’ll train you to behave yet, honey.”

“Please,” Arody begged. “Please do.”

Meanwhile, Bright was playing with his cunt. He was slippery and Bright seemed to like that, keeping up a low litany of, “That’s it, sweet, nice and wet. We need lots of wet from you. That’s it.”

And then his calloused fingers were scooping it up and rubbing it on Arody’s back pucker. Arody gave a shocked squeak into Jack’s mouth. Around him, all three men started chuckling again, while Bright traced that little ring.

It was sensitive. Arody trembled as Bright slicked it up, and when Bright poked a finger in, it was like a bolt of lightning had entered his bottom. Arody felt more breached than when anything was in his cunt. This ring of muscle wasn’t loose, but taut and virgin, and seemed to want to expel the finger. But the hard, insistent finger-fuck didn’t feel bad. It made something in Arody’s belly flop over, and his cunt spasmed, wired to his backside in a way it hadn’t been before. 

Soon enough, one finger was two. Then three. Bright took his time with it, pressing the tight pucker to accept more and more. Arody was now drooling, as the other two men sat before him and teased him. Their cocks were out, and he was told to press worshipful kisses to one, then the other. To lick one, then the other. To get his face up close, put wet sucks first to Barnabas’ long black pole, then Jack’s stubby, thick white one. He whimpered happily, eager to obey every command. He couldn’t believe how fortunate he was, to get _two_ cocks to taste. 

Barnabas let out a whistle. 

“What a good slut you are, pup! That’s it! Hey, did you ever suck a pair of balls before?”

Arody shook his head, but stuck his tongue out to show he liked the idea. It was all daubed with their pre-cum, and waving with electric joy. Jack grinned as Barnabas pulled himself forward, tilting his slender hips so Arody could bob his head down and suckle his big, warm balls. He mouthed first one, then the other, hungrily. He was dizzy with how good the weight felt on his tongue. 

And his back ring was a wonderful, achy stretch. Bright had four fingers in it, fucking in and out, slicked by the sticky wet of Arody’s cunt. Arody fucked back on instinct. Being penetrated there felt so dirty, but his body liked it. He smelled his own arousal acutely, overtaking even the mingled loveliness of the men’s souls — tangy, herbal, and sweet, respectively. He gave an especially desperate suck to one of Barnabas’ balls, unable to help himself, and then the handsome man was yelling. 

His cum striped Arody’s face and hair. Arody pulled off and opened his mouth eagerly. Jack began to scoop the spend onto his waiting tongue. Arody shook with delight, a wanton bitch, happy to just taste the thick liquid. 

And now Bright was adjusting himself again, slipping his hand out. Arody gave a guttural bay of need when Bright’s cock penetrated his back hole. It scraped sensitive, new walls, walls that had never been fucked before. Arody’s eyes rolled back, and he came with wild squeals, caught in the sensation of being for once a stuck virgin. The cock felt so much bigger back there, that channel felt so much more raw. His pearly gold nails dug into the dirt as he drooled and shook, and Bright fucked him and fucked him some more. It seemed to never abate. Arody was suspended in the moment, feeling himself owned by cock in a way he never had been before. 

He hardly realized when the men flipped him over again. They managed to do it without Bright breaking off, to swivel him on that cock as if to acknowledge that he belonged there. Arody didn’t mind. He was building to another orgasm. He ended up on his back again, curled around his big belly, legs up and out, both holes bared above him. Contorted just right, so Jack could plunge back into his cunt as Bright fucked open his tight back ring. He was passed from cock to cock, shaking and sweating, unable to think. Always with something in him. Just feeling it as they parted him, rubbed him from both ends. It was wonderful. 

And then it got better. Barnabas crouched over Arody’s head and fed him this newest cock properly. Arody shook with pleasure, coming a second time from the taste and heft of it alone. Now he could feel when Barnabas pushed a little piece of soul to him, as the others had. He wept with gratitude as he sucked it down. 

He came twice more that night. Fucked in every hole, trained in new kinds of sin. He was sore and so happy when they were done with him, and when they delivered him back to his hovel he kissed each of their boots, thanking them profusely with his ruined voice. 

“Aw, none of that. Think nothing of it, honey,” Barnabas said, and patted his head kindly. “And you don’t have to crawl, pup. We’ll kiss you properly.”

And they did, each of them in turn, so that when they finally left they left him quivering with need, on the verge of coming yet again. 

-

By then he had been pregnant about a week. Usually that was all the time it took. 

But he could feel that the hell-horse wanted to grow a bit longer. It wanted to be magnificent. It churned and brewed within him, and it was harder than ever to move with it inside him. Jack had told him one night that it would be best if he could try to, though. That it would keep his limbs strong if he didn’t let them waste away. So during the day he crawled about the hovel, stopping painfully whenever he needed to. Sucking a tit, or fingering himself awkwardly, to get some relief from all his aches. Then crawling again, and wishing he could walk. 

But he couldn’t. He was far too big. He was sure that if he tried, it would snap his spine in two. 

He knew he ought to be angry at the soldiers. They were the reason he was like this. But they were so kind to him. And, if it hadn’t been them, it would have been the Whychams. If it hadn’t been the Colonel’s horse in him, it would have been a vicious, valuable bull-calf. 

At least this way he got their nightly visits. At least this way he had that little collection of lovely soul-bits, rolling around in him, powerful and soothing. 

Spells. He could make them spells. All the soldiers told him to save the power for a special moment. The second night Barnabas came, the first time he sampled Arody’s cunt, he held the little changeling and thrust into him from the back. Whispered into his ear as he fucked him, as Jack and Bright stroked themselves above him to paint his hungry tongue with sweet, thick cum. 

“We can’t give you our full souls. All a man has is his soul, see? But we can give you some power. Now, you store it up, honey. You keep it for a moment you really need it. Then, when you cast, it’ll be a nice big spell. It’ll be so strong they’ll be sorry they treat you like they do.”

Arody tasted the hint of bitterness in the air at that pronouncement. The edge of rage. That was the overpowering sweetness in Barnabas. Righteous rage tasted like that, cloying and hot. 

Arody liked the taste. He decided to do as advised. He collected his little soul-scraps and buried them in him deep, where he could keep them safe. And when the Whychams came to look in on him, feed him his scraps and his moldy bread, he never let on about the power in him. 

They mostly let him alone, to finish growing the child. The Elder came once, to maul Arody’s tits and pontificate on how much he would charge the Colonel for the hell horse. And Pastor Whycham came by with the small crop twice, on days he was particularly worried about Fortitude’s soul, to punish the devil he held personally responsible. 

Arody collected a few new scars that way. He tried to will himself far away, but it was hard to with the power of the souls crackling in him, keeping him present. He had to endure the hits with his full mind at attention, and by the time the Pastor left him he was sobbing miserably into the straw. 

He wanted to make them sorry. He wanted to make them all sorry. But he was certain that even the little scraps of soul he had were not enough for how sorry he wanted to make them. He laid on his side in the dirt, snot-faced and bleeding, and wondered if he would know when he did have enough power. 

It was sometime around midday, the very opposite of the witching hour, the hour devils were weakest. He could see the bright sun peeking in around the cracks in the door. He sniffled pathetically, and grabbed a tit again to suck and soothe himself. His tongue lathed his own dirty nipple, curling around it and giving a half-hearted tug. He sighed when the brimstone milk dribbled out. 

Then he spied a little grub worm inching its way up the wall. 

He normally didn’t eat them unless he was truly famished. And when he did eat them, he squashed them in one go, killing them painlessly. He didn’t like to make things suffer. He didn’t actually like to know he was a demon, a creature that devoured everything in its path. But the hell-horse demanded so much of his strength that he knew he would be eating this worm. 

He pulled himself awkwardly to the wall, half-crawling. He reached for the worm. 

It melted away, into the wall. Arody blinked, shocked, wondering if he was seeing things. But when he put his hand down, the place the worm had been rippled, and then it was a black moth. The moth’s wings flapped once, twice. Arody stared at it. It flew from the wall, made a loop in the air, and then settled on his tongue, which was still dangling stupidly from his mouth. 

He swallowed it on instinct. It tasted — _off_. Acrid, heady, and intoxicating. Not bad. But not like a soul or an essence normally did. He writhed in the dirt, and something took hold of him, like cold fingers gently encircling his heart. 

“Whipper Will,” he rasped out, unable to stop himself. “Whipper Will. I’ll give you this small spell, child. Mostly because I’m tired of this town. I thought you would sort things out faster. But you didn’t. And by now you’re trying my patience.”

And then the bitter black bubble of the moth burst inside him. Its dark fog poured up through his throat, and he coughed out the spell, a lancing spell of revenge. Not big enough to make everyone sorry for how they treated him. But big enough to manipulate _one_. 

He just had to pick the one. 

_Fortitude_ , he told the black moth at once. _I hate Fortitude the most. I want to get rid of Fortitude_. 

-

That night he didn’t see the soldiers. They couldn’t come to him. The Blessed Elder decided to pay him a visit that night, though he should have been watching Fortitude. 

Arody bore the rough fuck silently. He was thinking about the black moth. 

The next morning, a cry went up over the Whycham homestead. Fortitude was gone, and Witch-Biter with him. He’d run off to join the army somehow, in the one spare moment when no one had been watching him.


	3. Freed and Named

Several of the town’s children claimed that they had seen Fortitude riding in the direction of Riverview. Goodman Hastings, who had only lately returned from a three-day trip to that city (loudly proclaiming that absolutely no gambling had occurred), reported that a troop of soldiers had newly arrived at the gates of Riverview. Likely Fortitude was aiming to join them. 

The Whychams were beside themselves, and the Pastor gathered together a group of Goodmen to chase the boy down, while Goody and the girls huddled in the great room and loudly prayed. The Blessed Elder took the flogger to Arody’s backside in frustrated anger, then convened all the youth of the town for a special sermon promising hellfire should any of them follow Fortitude’s example. 

But the soldiers took it worst of all. 

Arody had not been expecting that. The night after Fortitude’s disappearance, he was forced to please the Elder again. By now he wanted more than anything to gather more soul-power, to do more than simply drive one foolish boy away. He wanted to drive them all away. He wanted to be left in peace, so he could crawl to Bright and his other lovers and offer himself up. 

He was just a witch-born changeling. He had no real value. But he could take cock, and swell up big with anything they wished him to. He could serve them that way. They were kind. It would please him to serve them. 

He hadn’t thought the Elder would fall for the same trick as Goodman Deekes. It seemed inconceivable. Still, the fog of the black moth was still dancing like dust motes in the air, and as his tongue gathered up the last of it, it seemed to suggest he ought to try it. 

The Blessed Elder had always liked Arody’s tits. He fell for it. As Arody leaned over him painfully, rubbing his big sore breasts over the large, grizzled old cock, the Elder moaned in pleasure. 

“That’s it, you demon! Worship it! Thou art lower than a dog, foul witch, and cursed to slave on my cockstand! Rub it well, and it will give thee the milk of penitence thy worthless cunt so longs for!”

Arody rolled his eyes in the dark. The Elder was still too talkative, not gone enough yet. Arody put his back into it. The Elder’s balls slapped the little valley of skin beneath his tits, where his belly swelled out. He painfully wriggled so as to make circular motions. Sliding his tits up the firm cockmeat. Rubbing those balls between the mounds of tit and belly. Soon his tits were sticky with pre-cum, and all the Elder was able to do was groan, a man overcome with pleasure and sinful temptation. 

Then Arody took his chance. As before, he touched just the forked tip of his tongue to the cockhead. 

This time he was prepared for the awful taste. The Elder tasted of arrogance, a taste like mealy, rotten meat. He tasted too of cruelty, which was the dull bitter yellow of an old bruise. 

And he fairly longed to be devoured. His big ugly soul rushed up Arody’s tongue and into Arody’s gullet, and it took effort not to vomit it out. It was a heavy, disgusting mass, and Arody was shocked to see that the loss of it didn’t alter the Elder at all. The large man was still grunting, giving into the titfuck. When he came, cum spurting up to coat Arody’s neck, chest, and chin, he said, as he sometimes did, “Devil-filth! That will do. Tuck me into my trousers. Thou hast done thy sinful work well tonight.”

Arody obeyed. He bowed his head as the Elder rose and shuffled off. The cum on him felt and smelled ugly, as ugly as the soul he’d just taken. It took everything in him not to expel that soul. 

The door creaked open. Arody looked up sharply, afraid the Elder had realized his sin and come back to hurt him for it. 

But no. It was soldiers. All three of them, his two redcoat lieutenants, and just behind them his handsome, wild-eyed Barnabas. Arody was so relieved to see them, but confused too. 

“The Elder,” he rasped out. “‘‘Twas here. May return.”

They had not visited him last night. They weren’t to visit him when the Elder did, when they could all be caught. 

But now they stepped forward anyway, to unchain him and gather him up. He was so round and big that now only Jack could bear his weight, and the big man rubbed his back as he carried Arody across the moonlit fields to their spot by the river. Arody relaxed into his arms, boneless and trusting. 

He had fallen in love with these men. All three of them. Devil spawn _could_ love. This must be love, this fragile desire to hold tight to their little slips of soul and protect each unique soul-piece as best he could. When they washed him, he chased after their lips, desperate for kisses. Softly pleased when he was always obliged, when three sets of hands stroked his tits, his belly, playfully splashed water on his sensitive cunt. 

Then he opened his eyes and realized there was a fourth figure on the riverbank. 

Colonel Tolland. No. In the moonlight, he looked all wrong. Colonel Tolland was an older man, as old as the Blessed Elder. But he now looked very young. His white hair was a shining brown, his eyes were the unlined eyes of a youth. He had an upturned, delicate nose, and lips as full and delicious as Barnabas’. A black moth fluttered on those lips. 

Arody was afraid. He felt his skin grow cold. He rasped something out, some kind of protest. 

“Shhh,” said Bright. “It’s alright, sweetling. He won’t hurt you, my love. He’s come to please you. Don’t worry, little one.”

When they spread him out on the grass to feed him, they brought him more food than ever before. All four of them. Crickets and fat, wriggling beetles, plump and juicy apples and tomatoes, more field mice. Colonel Tolland handed him a small suckling pig, and would not stop pressing the piglet into his hands until Arody snapped its poor little neck and ate it, bones and all. Its essence was golden and innocent. Arody felt his face go wet. Poor little piglet. Poor, delicious little piglet. 

“Can you feel it?” Colonel Tolland murmured, into his hair. “Not very different from a soul, is it? That’s because it is a soul. Every time you eat, you can taste it. We shall make you fat and rich with soul-power, my little...”

He trailed off. 

“Repent,” Bright said quickly, from Arody’s other side. 

Colonel Tolland shook his head. 

“That’s not his name.”

And then Jack’s big hands were pressing leaves into Arody’s mouth. They were lit up with life, and Arody blinked, tearing up. He agreed with what the Colonel was saying. He’d just always thought he was alone in his secret belief. 

The Sanctified were wrong. All things all did have a tiny slip of soul. Every last one. Maybe not so bright and powerful as human souls, but still there. All life had a preciousness, a sustenance, that crackled inside Arody as he swallowed it down. 

“The difference, Sweetling, is that humans can consent to give you some of our souls, and that contract is what makes ours bring you a special kind of strength,” Bright murmured, petting Arody’s flanks to calm him. “But you can never actually take our souls unless we want you to. All this business of you tempting us is nonsense. We let ourselves be tempted.”

“ _We’ve_ been tempting _you_ , pup,” Barnabas said, from his place between Arody’s spread legs. He pushed into Arody’s cunt. Gently rocked his cock in, making Arody moan at the slow, teasing drag of that hard flesh parting his slit. 

“Aye, that’s what witches do,” murmured Jack, and his big fingers lovingly stroked Arody’s tongue to get him nice and wet for Barnabas. 

-

That night, he took them all. In his cunt, his back hole, and his mouth. They maneuvered him like he was a doll and he gratefully let them, coming nearly every time a new cock fucked into him. He could feel them sliding him little slips of soul, filling him up.

All but the Colonel. The Colonel would not kiss him or fuck his mouth. He fucked Arody’s rear hole and left bruised finger-imprints on Arody’s hips. He and Bright together fucked Arody’s cunt, which was slippery enough and loose enough to take two without pain. But he never let Arody have any piece of his soul. The most Arody got was the taste of his cum, scooped out of his pucker by Jack and finger-fed to him filthily. 

There wasn’t the lightness there had been before. The easy laughs, the camaraderie. The pet names and reassurances. The four men were tense. There was a sawdust smell of regret to them, regret and frustration. 

“What’s...wrong?” Arody tried to force out. 

But they would not answer him. Each time he asked, one of them would kiss him, or feed him a cock to make him stupid with need. 

“You’re so good,” Barnabas told him, kissing him deep and playing with his tits. 

“The best little devil-puss,” Jack said, massaging his ass as he pumped into it. 

“My sweetling,” breathed out Bright, coming in Arody’s messy, already-full cunt, coming as Arody cried out and came too. “My perfect sweetling. May you be strong. May you fare better than you have, little witch-child, and have the revenge you deserve.”

And then the Colonel was shifting Barnabas aside and leaning over Arody, pressing his lips to Arody’s lips. 

He didn’t taste like a soul at all. He tasted like the powerful, bitter emptiness of the black moth. It shoved into Arody until it found the soul of the Elder and the Colonel broke off the kiss, sucking the black power back. 

He laughed. Lightning cracked the sky. 

“Why, you little satankin!” the Colonel said, and his voice was wild and _different_ , somehow. “I didn’t think you had it in you!”

-

Arody must have passed out in his haze of pleasure. When he came to, he was chained up in his dirty hovel again. The soldiers were gone. Dawn light poured through the open door. 

There were shouts from the Whycham homestead. It took Arody a moment to decipher them, and then when he did, his stomach heaved with ugly anger and despair. 

The soldiers were gone. Really gone. They had vanished just as Fortitude had, taking with them much of the money in the meetinghouse coffers. 

-

Their timing, like the timing of all witches, was the devil’s own luck. 

That evening, Fortitude Whycham returned. He was far from alone. In addition to the Pastor and the other Goodmen sent to fetch him, he rode with a battalion of redcoats. And Lieutenant Simon Shackle. 

The real one. He was a stern, tight-lipped man, neither so large nor so tow-headed as his pretender. He was chasing four fugitives. Two escaped slaves, an escaped criminal. The latter, one Jack O’Dell, had been forced into an indenture and shipped to the new land from Lietty, for the crime of tricking honest folk with claims of being practiced at witchcraft. 

And there was another fugitive. A traitor. Shackle was looking for a treasonous former Lieutenant. Suffer-Well-The-Whims-Of-Thy-Betters Bright. He had a writ calling for Bright to be executed. The former army officer was charged with murder, for the vicious killing of his superior, Colonel Miles Tolland. 

“They will all be hanged when we catch them,” Fortitude cried gleefully, resplendent in his new red coat. Though it was late, time for all the townsfolk to retreat to their houses for evening prayers, instead all were gathered in the main street to listen to Shackle. Arody was there too, dragged out of his hovel by Pastor Whycham, forced to crawl despite the awful weight of his belly. 

“They asked for a witch to be bred for them, I am told. Why?” Lieutenant Shackle asked sharply. “Where is this so-called witch?”

Arody was pushed forward, the Pastor dragging him by the collar. Around him, the townsfolk jeered and aimed kicks at his legs. Arody caught sight of May, white-faced, incredibly trying to hold the crowd back from him. But she did not succeed. Hands reached out and pulled his hair, slapped him viciously. 

“Here’s the dirty devil-slut!” called out Increase Fawcett, cupping a hand over his mouth to better be heard. “He begged to be bred! Spelled us all to make us do it! He was probably in league with the fugitives!”

Someone threw a clod of dirt. Then someone else. Soon Arody was cringing and crying out as he was attacked, beset from all sides. It only stopped when Lieutenant Shackle cried, “Enough! I shall take him to the river! We will weigh him down with stones and drown him until he is ready to speak.”

Pastor Whycham twisted his broad grey hat in his hands. 

“Lieutenant, that’s not the way with this one,” he said, oily-voiced and cruel. “Why, if that were the way, we would have succeeded in stamping him out when he was young! He is quite used to stones and drownings, and the usual kinds of punishment. But we canst teach thee how to really hurt him.”

-

When Arody was small, very small, he had lived with his mother. 

She was not one of the Sanctified. She had only come over to the new land with the Sanctified, as a slip of a girl, a servant to the Whychams. When her indenture was through, she had her freedom, but not the money to move to Riverview. She had been forced to live in a small rundown cottage on the edge of town, as a hired girl. Many Goodmen had proposed marriage to her, Arody understood. She had been quite beautiful, with fiery red hair and large dark eyes. But she had refused marriage. She didn’t truly wish to join the Sanctified. 

She kept Arody a secret when he was born. She knew what he was. She must have given in to the devil to make him, after all. He came out of her speaking full sentences, mind awhirl. Hungry and toddling and forever shoving beetles in his mouth, his little tail snapping behind him, his pearly-gold nails forming claws. But his mother didn’t tell him he was a devil. She called him her Dee, little Dee, which was a sweet name for a baby boy or baby girl in her native Lietty. She made him sleep during the day so as to have him escape detection, but at night she took him walking through the forest and let him play with the fawns, splash on the riverbanks. Roll about and taste the grass and devour field mice. 

Then, when he was four or so, she was caught. 

“Goody Yarrow,” Blessed Elder Whycham had boomed out, as she was dragged to the hanging tree. “We find thee guilty of witchcraft. The punishment is death. May thy soul rot in hell, and may thine whelp soon follow thee there.”

By then they had cut off her hair, lashed her, and stripped her naked. The men of the town jeered as she was dragged to her death. Arody screamed and screamed. They had placed him in a cage, and pushed hot braziers through the bars to burn and quiet him. His mother hadn’t cried at the lashing she’d received, but she had cried to see this. She had cried too when the townsfolk had tried to drown him, and when they’d tied his little limbs to four posts and weighed him down with coals. She had cried when they shoved coals inside him, jeering at his wanton devil-hole, and when they cut off every piece of him that they could think to, to see what would grow back through the aid of black magic. 

Even then, he had understood that these things were not just to punish him. The townsfolk believed him damned. They didn’t truly think he could suffer. No, this torture was to punish his mother. To make her go to her death miserable. 

With his last wail before his tongue was cut, he’d made her neck snap. Given her that painless death. But it hadn’t truly been painless. Her face had been contorted with despair, thick with tears, to see the way he was treated. 

“We will use the burning tongs to pull out the hell-colt,” the Elder boomed to the crowd now. The soldiers held Arody down as he thrashed. There were joyous, bloodthirsty shouts. 

“Break its limbs!” jeered Goody Blanken. 

“Kill it and shove it back inside him!” screamed Fear-Not Channing. 

“Cut it up into bits!” cackled Goodman Plunkett. “And make the devil eat it! Let the devil use that to power its wicked magic, if it will dare!”

There was a roar of approval for this. Arody’s stomach heaved. He thought of his mother, of the pain she had felt. He thought he must have hurt her, inside her. The way the hell-colt hurt him. His nails had been long, sharp claws, after all. But she had still loved him. She had still loved him, though she was a witch. 

He didn’t want the colt hurt. He wasn’t sure he loved it. But he could. He could love it. If he was allowed to love, he could do it. They just didn’t want to let him. They never did. 

He reached inside him, grabbed hold of the hideous, heavy soul of the Blessed Elder, and forced it to his tongue. 

He spoke his revenge. 

-

It would take four days for the little children of Divine Providence, the only known survivors, to stumble into Riverview. Filthy, blood-stained, sobbing, but mostly unhurt, they would cry out the nightmare of what had befallen the town. 

They wouldn’t speak of a witch or a devil. Devil magic only worked if humans consented to it. If humans gave in to their impulses. 

So they would speak of a fight that had broken out over a horse. Fortitude Whycham had suddenly declared that he intended to claim a magnificent colt, a beast which from the moment of its bloody birth proved to be as fast as hell itself. But Lieutenant Simon Shackle had glimpsed the thing and wanted it for the use of his regiment. The soldiers and Goodmen had fallen to arguing, and then the youth. Then even the Pastors and Elders and Goodwives. A madness had taken hold, turning neighbor on neighbor. The townsfolk of Divine Providence had fallen upon each other with fists and muskets and axes. Torn out each other’s hair, each other’s tongues. 

The superstitious still claimed it was a devil. But men of reason called it hysteria, and said that this had always been the state of things among the Sanctified. A credulous religion, that barred laughter and revelry. They were prone to mass killings every few years, to stamp out any dissenters, any of the poor or old. Any women who seemed a bit too wild. 

Little wonder that they had eventually turned on themselves. But it was odd, and unsettling, that they had managed to do away with an entire battalion in their collective madness. 

\- 

Arody, by then, was deep in the forest. 

He walked, and when he couldn’t walk he crawled, and when he couldn’t crawl he collapsed and the colt whinnied and stood guard over him. 

It had been born before it wanted to be. It had wanted to become even bigger, even more majestic. But it was quite big. It was only four days old and had doubled in size. It had eyes of flashing red and a tawny coat of gold. It was sweet and wild, prone to dashing off into the wood, so fast it was a blur. 

But it always came back. Arody was its mother. At night it sometimes lay on its side and let Arody cradle its big, frightening head. Arody would reach out and lick its fine coat, just to taste the hot, flashing soul within. 

Its name, he decided, was Comeuppance. 

That was not for him. That was for his mother.

Comeuppance responded to the name at once, whinnying his approval and nuzzling the changeling that had borne him, letting his hot horse tongue lap over Arody’s face. Like this was a language they shared. 

Arody loved him. 

As he crawled through the wood, slow and pained, all his battered body healing, he stopped and ate what he liked. The horse ate with him. It was like Arody, forever tasting the soul of things. Grass. Leaves. Flowers and roots and bits of bark. Arody didn’t want to kill any more small animals, not really, but Comeuppance was fearful, and hunted raccoons and otters like he was a tiger. Arody could sense his enjoyment when he swallowed their bright souls and used them to make mad, fierce dashes into the wood. Stronger and faster than before. 

Arody was getting stronger too. But slowly. With the small, bright magic of the forest, the little bits of it he felt himself ready to eat. Soon he could walk more than crawl, and even wash himself in the streams. Soon his limbs and cunt stopped hurting. He began to feel better than he had in years. 

He was sure he didn’t look better. His nails grew out to claws, on his hands and feet. His tongue lolled out pleasantly, tasting everything he passed, exploring, like a cat’s tongue might. His belly was a small saggy pouch again, beneath large tits he suckled dry each night, alone in the forest clearings. A little demon, free. The picture of sin. 

When he was done appeasing his tits, he would finger himself. Both holes, with his back arching off the ground and his moans shaking the trees around him. He would have to be careful with his claws, but even the occasional scrape was worth it. 

He was thinking of the soldiers. Pretending it was them. His soldiers, his witches. 

He had used the Elder’s soul to destroy Divine Providence, and left that soul a shriveled, ugly husk that he’d spat out when he was done. But he still had the little slips of power Bright, Jack, and Barnabas had gifted him. These still lit him up and soothed him. 

And now he brought them out, carefully, and spoke new spells. 

“Whither, whither are they, the three I love?” he asked the trees and branches, the ferns and hedges and clumps of clover. 

And the green shook itself out and surged, bent and twisted so that each tree limb and vine pointed out the way. 

And he walked. And walked and walked, sometimes with his tawny hell-horse patiently beside him. Until Comeuppance was big enough to ride, and whinnied for Arody to clamber onto his back. Arody hugged him on that day, breathing in his animal smell, grateful to him. 

But before they set out like that, their pursuers caught up with them. 

Two. Just two. The first was as fast as Comeuppance, only with a rather better sense of smell. Wanton exploded onto the clearing with a flurry of barks, pouncing on his mother and licking Arody head to toe, wild and delighted. 

May stumbled in after him. Her dress was torn, she was clutching a rucksack that smelled of hard bread and harder cheese, and there was blood on her forehead, but she was alive. The only other one he’d thought to spare, besides the children. 

“Wait,” she said, and her voice was a bit unsteady, but not precisely afraid. “Please. Take me with you.”

-

They made better time on Comeuppance, with Wanton yipping and bounding along after them. 

With the dog there, Arody didn’t need to waste the last of the soul-shreds on casting spells. He simply licked the knowledge of what he was tracking into Wanton’s silky black fur, and the dog led the way. 

“Thou must agree to be a witch,” he told May when they made camp. “Thou must agree never to be Sanctified, not ever again. Thou must let me tempt thee when I like. Thou need not give in. But thou must not hurt me for trying.”

These felt like the right words. May looked at him once, and nodded. She said, “I agree. What do we do?”

He wasn’t sure. He was completely naked, sitting with his arms wrapped around his legs by a fire May had built to warm them. She was sitting cross-legged. She’d just finished eating some of her cheese. She had offered it to Arody, but he had declined, preferring a feast of daisies and twigs and fat pods of mantis eggs. 

“We must do horrible spells,” he said now, for that seemed to be the main part of witchery. He’d done one horrible spell and it had worked out rather well for him so far. But, well—

“Only I don’t have a use for a horrible spell now,” he decided. “Perhaps we can do a nice one.”

May looked oddly game. 

“How do I cast a spell?”

This stumped Arody. He had no idea. He thought his witches must have been casting spells the whole time they’d been in Divine Providence. Spells to break his chains when they liked, and spells to keep the Elders from running them from town. At the very least. But he didn’t have the slightest notion of how they’d done it. 

The black moth, maybe. And there was that song he’d heard snatches of. 

Whippoorwill. 

Or perhaps Whipper Will. 

Or Poor Will. 

He didn’t even know that. He blushed, embarrassed. He felt as if he must be disappointing May. 

She thrust up her square chin. 

“What did you do with the other witches?” she asked, with evident courage and a great deal of interest. 

“Oh,” Arody said. “It—that’s simple. Lie back and pull up your skirts. I’ll show you.”

He had never eaten cunt, but he thought it must not be hard. Bright had always seemed to savor his taste, anyway. And Bright did not have a devil-tongue, which thrilled at tasting just about anything. 

May tasted like rare vanilla and cool grey mist, sweet and creamy-cold. Arody lapped her until she got wet and was shrieking. He felt it when she allowed her soul to flutter onto his tongue. 

It wasn’t feathery. It was as whole as the Elder’s. It had never before been shredded and carefully bit-off by a devil, so it was just fat and complete, like an egg. But it tasted honest and good, well-intentioned but a bit ashamed. Arody held it in his mouth and drooled on it, then licked most of it back into her tight slit until she was shaking and coming. 

Most of it. A sliver he took for himself, to add to his growing collection. And with that he made his first witch, the first one that was really his, and only his. When May was done coming he climbed onto her and turned over, saying happily, “I’ll do it again. Nice, isn’t it?” 

May let out a faint noise of dazed agreement, plainly shocked. 

Arody wriggled his own cunt over her. It wasn’t so pretty or tight as hers. It was a filthy changeling snatch, dark and worn from every kind of fucking. He wouldn’t make her taste it, not if she didn’t want to, but if she wanted to touch it...

“Do you want to feel inside me?” he rasped out shyly. “Please?”

There was a pause. Then her fingers were rubbing him softly, tenderly. Like she was afraid to hurt him. Arody grunted happily and pressed down on them, until she was more insistent. Until she’d slid them in him properly and was fucking him with them. 

Almond fogged up the air. Arody snapped his hips, desperate to get her fingers in deeper. He put his mouth to her cunt to please her again. He was shaking with the lovely, uncomplicated joy of being fondled but not hurt. 

-

It took three days of riding before he could taste his witches in the air. 

Lieutenant Bright, violet-tinged and herbal. Jack, tangy-hot. Barnabas, so powerfully sweet his soul was like a cool misty syrup.

And another smell. The crackling black smell of the moth, lurking everywhere. He couldn’t understand how he hadn’t smelled it before. 

By now they had made it to a desolate, rolling shore. They picked their way through the green, marshy brush. Insects swarmed the air and Arody used his tongue to snatch them and swallow them before they bit May or his children. They tasted buzzy and crunchy, their little souls full of energy.

They rode. And rode. When the sun was setting over the great dark waters to the west of them, painting the rolling ocean all sorts of odd hues, Comeuppance cantered over a sand dune, and they saw them. 

Bright, Barnabas, and Jack, all kneeling, hands bound. The still-young Colonel Tolland lying on the shore before them, eyes blank and unseeing. A crowd of brown-skinned, painted people — 

“Savages!” May gasped. 

— led by a woman in buckskins. A very tall brown-skinned woman, whose golden eyes, like Arody’s, were without pupils and without whites. Her hands were not claws, and she did not have a tail, but there were great horns growing from her head, branching and magnificent. Behind her, two or three of the men seemed to suffer from the same demonic condition. But it was clear the woman was in the lead. She was speaking rapidly to a hissing, strutting man in black, a man with a tongue as forked as Arody’s. 

And then the man turned, and Arody saw for the first time the devil that must have been the black moth. 

Arody swung down from the horse and took three faint steps to him, wondering. He could hear May clambering down and trying to coax him back, but he couldn’t look away. 

He had tasted this devil’s soul. Been gifted his magic. Made love to his witches. 

A devil so slender he looked prepared to break in two. _He_ had the devil-tail, long and thrashing, like the tail of a panther. He had the devil eyes, too, but his were a deep brown-red, and his long white hair coiled and flapped about his face like the wings of a moth. His skin was nearly as dark as Barnabas’, but his features were delicate and faint, like a girl’s. 

“ _You wouldn’t seriously hurt poor Will, not me, not poor Whippoorwill, who is so like you_ —“ Arody heard him say, in the hooting, musical voice he’d once, at odd moments, attributed to the Colonel. 

“You are not like me. You’re a fetus. I have been here for ten thousand years,” the woman said. Her voice had so much power it reverberated, whipping sand across the beach, making Arody and May throw up their arms to avoid getting it in their eyes. Comeuppance whinnied nervously, stamping his leg, and Wanton yipped. 

The animals caught the woman’s attention. 

“Who is that?” she said. She waved a hand, and the painted men and women split into two clumps, one group standing watchfully over the captive witch-soldiers, the other group advancing on Arody. Arody’s heart beat frightfully in his chest. He wanted to turn and run, and he could. He could get back on Comeuppance and flee with Wanton at their heels. But he didn’t know if May would move quickly enough to do the same. He stepped in front of her and his monstrous children, swallowing hard. 

“ _That’s_ a fetus,” snarled Whippoorwill, but he was ignored. The horned woman stuck out her tongue in Arody’s direction and he felt it pulse the air. Felt her tasting him. Her fellow horn-demons each stepped beside him, and gestured for him to come forward. 

“Come here,” she said, the command making the sands ripple. “Come to Towaquippa. What are you called, and what made you be?”

Arody swallowed hard again. The sand sank, slippery-soft, beneath his bare feet as he walked to her. He got as close as he dared, close enough to cast a sideways glance to the witch-soldiers. Jack had his eyes squeezed shut and was tight-lipped with evident fright, but Bright and Barnabas both met his gaze. Both looked worried. 

“Oh no,” Towaquippa said softly. “Don’t try to claim these four. You will be third in line if you do, little spirit.”

Arody found his voice.

“I’m a devil,” he said. 

His golden-eyed fellow devil snorted. So did Whippoorwill. 

“I am!” Arody insisted. “I destroyed a whole town!” 

He cast his scarred, skinny arm in May’s direction. 

“You can ask my witch! And I have birthed four monsters! You can ask her that as well!”

“Why would we ask her?” Towaquippa said silkily. “You’re not lying. You can’t. Not any more than I can. Not any more than Poor Will can, much as he’d like to.”

Whippoorwill snarled at this, making small sand-tornadoes spring up. Towaquippa waved them away with a hand. 

Arody found that terrifying. But still. He had to say it. 

“I want these three,” he said shakily, pointing at his three kneeling lovers. Jack was looking at him now, stupefied. Arody realized that someone had cracked him across the skull, leaving a bloody lump, and was angry over it. His voice became former, firm enough to make little crabs scuttle into a circle about them. 

“I am the strongest I have ever been, and I want these men. I see myself with one of them. That one at least is mine—“

“None of them is yours,” Whippoorwill cut in, a bit nastily. “They are mine. They are pledged to me, and they make the bond stronger every time they invoke my name. When they called on me to kill their enemy they bound themselves to me—“

“And you used up all your strength on the kill. A single murder,” Towaquippa said, cool about it. 

Whippoorwill stamped his foot. 

“Of a man who would be very important! Who was to have led a rebellion against the old world in seven years, uniting all the colonies! I rewrote history with that kill!”

“You wrung yourself out to take out one slaveowner,” said Towaquippa derisively. “I kill nine before breakfast every day. But it does not matter. One of your men invoked _my_ name, begging to save you—“

“Which you hardly accomplished! Save me? You shoved me inside him and nearly broke apart his soul—“ snarled Will again, tail lashing back and forth in agitation. 

“I did what he asked. I gave you his strength and so saved you,” Towaquippa said, firm. “And you skipped out on what you were to give me in return. Now your witches’ souls are forfeit. If they will not let themselves be completely devoured, I will eat your soul—“

Bright gave an agonized cry. Barnabas squeezed his eyes shut, throat bobbing, head shaking. 

“—but it does seem they will give themselves to me to prevent that,” Towaquippa finished happily. 

“What?” cried Arody in dismay. “No! Please!”

The other two devils turned on him, Towaquippa bemused and Whippoorwill very suddenly thoughtful. 

“I didn’t exactly skip out on your bargain,” he said in his high, singing tones, his black lips spreading into a white smile. “I did worry about having to suffer for you in the state I was in. And I worried for my witches, who, you see, were being threatened with public execution for Tolland’s murder. So I wouldn’t say it was personal. We _had_ to skip town. But I made sure I took us to someone who could give you what you wanted.”

He took a fluttery step towards Arody. His huge, liquid eyes blinked. His smile widened. 

“The little one told you. He’s birthed four. _I’m_ too drained to waste all that energy swelling up with a baby, but if you want another child, Towaquippa, I believe he’s more than good for it.”

-

She wanted Comeuppance. 

Arody sat in the sand, the horse on his side before him, and clutched his colt’s head to his heart. He was crying desperately. 

“No! No!” he managed, between his sobs. 

Towaquippa was plainly discomfited. She had demanded they all gather in a circle to settle the matter, and was sitting before him smoking a pipe. Whippoorwill lounged to the side, wrapped around the Colonel’s body just the same way Arody was wrapped around his child. Around them there was a ring of Towaquippa’s guard, who had quite politely found some driftwood for May to sit on, and who were petting a preening Wanton, and who still did not let any of the witch-soldiers free. 

“What is wrong with him?” she demanded, mystified by Arody’s tears. 

Whippoorwill gave an elegant shrug. 

“He’s a baby,” he said. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s only had _four_.”

“How many have you had?” Arody cried out. “Don’t you love them, when they’re born?”

“They were six hundred scarab beetles and I set them to eating up the entire yield of a certain farmer who was rude about my hair, so no,” said Whippoorwill snidely. “I don’t even know where they are now. Maybe dead. Or maybe they arranged themselves into a magic man-suit and proceeded to seduce fineborn ladies. They did like to do that.”

“You,” Towaquippa said to him, quite decidedly, “are the most obnoxious little bastard I have ever met.”

Then she focused on Arody. 

“I have birthed thousands. Birds and fish and electric eels. Bison and swallows and herds of reindeer. I did love them, I always do. But when you have so many, they don’t seem so individually important. Now I am old and my magic too great. It swamps them out when they begin to hurt me. So I cannot have any. I thought I would be glad never to bear another, but I do want another. But you do not have to give him to me. This is Whippoorwill’s problem, because he’s overextended himself.”

But Arody could not understand how a witchling as powerful as Whippoorwill, whose brimstone smoke had been so hot and alive, could possibly be too drained to do what weak, pitiful Arody had just managed. He said as much. 

“You’re probably just naturally a better spell-worker than he is,” Towaquippa said, with a shrug. 

Whippoorwill’s head shot up, white hair flapping about his face. 

“Take that back!” he shrieked. “How dare you? He didn’t know what a spell was until my witches taught him! I won’t stand for this! Yalagulo never treats me this way!”

“Yalagulo’s not here. He’s in his beloved Rotandi, causing a slave rebellion,” Towaquippa said. “And I know the Lady of Dancing Mice treated you far worse than I ever have, Whippoorwill. Not to mention Gentleman Toppit.”

Whippoorwill grimaced and subsided, muttering foul curses into the prone Colonel’s hair. Arody shivered, and tried to think things over. 

“I don’t want those men eaten,” he said to Towaquippa. “Or — or Poor Will either.”

Whippoorwill frightened him, but Arody wasn’t sure he hadn’t had a hand in the witch-soldiers helping him. And Arody didn’t want to abandon him. He’d never met a fellow witchling before, and it did not seem right to hurt or offend either of the first two he did meet. 

“I don’t see that you get a say,” Towaquippa said, not unkindly. 

“Yes I do,” Arody insisted. “They fed me bits of their soul. I am their witch too.”

Whippoorwill made a gagging noise. Towaquippa just looked confused again. 

“That just means you got them to give you some power,” she said slowly, like she was speaking to a child. “That doesn’t bind you to them, child! Humans can’t do that unless they have very powerful spells, and not until they know your name.”

Then, slyly, “What _is_ your name?”

Arody blinked at her. 

“You just told me that lets people control me!” he sputtered. “So why would I say it? I thought you were a ten thousand year old devil, but that was the worst bit of manipulation I’ve ever seen!”

Towaquippa blinked. 

“We don’t manipulate,” she said slowly. “And we aren’t devils. We are just forces bigger than humans. We happen when there’s a great event, or when a human feels an emotion so big it threatens to kill them. Loneliness. Or fright. Or perfect joy, or a secret untold. Then we sit in their bellies and grow into the shape of their dreams, and we are birthed to become the wind and the trees and the senses that construct their world. That does not make us devils. Who told you all this nonsense about devils?”

Arody stared at her, dumbfounded. He supposed this pronouncement ought to make him feel big, but it only made him feel small and frightened. 

“No one,” he stammered out. “It doesn’t matter. I killed them.”

Towaquippa grinned. 

“Good. That proves the point, doesn’t it? I think I like you, little scarred-up baby. I think you won’t try to cheat me the way Whippoorwill did. And you’re lucky, because I like bargains and games, and I like playing them with people who don’t cheat. I have an idea. And if you play along, maybe you will save these witches you like so much.”

-

The witches were forced to kneel before Arody and Towaquippa. Bright, Jack, and Barnabas, in that order. Whippoorwill stood off to the side, wringing his fluttery long-fingered hands. 

“What about my Adam?” he gestured to the Colonel, now propped up against the same piece of driftwood May sat on. “He can’t even play this game! He can barely open his eyes!”

“He gets to go free only if the others succeed,” said Towaquippa, firm. 

The rules were simple, but they made Arody’s heart sink. One by one, the soldiers were to come and put their hands on him. Touch him, try to press their own human souls into him. Try to pry for his name. It could be done by a truly skilled witch, Towaquippa had explained. One that was practiced in dealing with their kind, practiced enough to pick up the trick of sensing truth with a touch. Of course, a skilled spirit such as herself could also push the truth into them. But Arody was not to do that, even if he could. Arody was to lock his name down deep, and answer no question they put to him that asked outright for it. Otherwise, if they asked a question, he was to answer. For spirit names always came from somewhere. Towaquippa was named for the stars of her birth, and Poor Will for the lilting birdcall of his voice. Arody, she said, was sure to have come by his true name through some other twisting coincidence like that. Their kind always did. And a witch who was clever — not skilled, but clever — could hit on the right clues. Could pick up the right details, and spin the name out from nothing. 

Towaquippa made him lie before the men. It was night by now, and cold. He shivered. He heard when their bonds were cut, and blinked, and then they were lurching over him. Bright caressed his jaw, Barnabas the pillowy swell of his soft, empty belly. Jack rubbed his inner thigh carefully. Now, because he was paying attention, Arody could feel how _they_ reached into _him_. 

Sifting through his own essence. No. His soul. He wasn’t a devil. He had a soul. And they were looking for his name, but he’d promised Towaquippa he would bury it deep. 

“When were you first called Repent?” Bright bit out. His hands massaged Arody’s tits, kneading the flesh and making milk spur out. Arody moaned gutturally, liking the firm, decided touch. 

“Wh—when they decided to torture me, to punish my mother,” he rasped out. 

“What was her name?” Barnabas asked, before dipping his head to Arody’s cock-stub. He took the dead mass of flesh in his mouth and swirled his tongue around it. It was little but scar tissue, but the action was still warm and intimate, and Arody shuddered at it. 

“Maria Yarrow,” he said. He felt a brief spark of hope, for he thought that would give them a clue, but they did not take it as a clue. Jack was working a thick thumb into his back hole, making Arody whimper, and he asked, “How old are you, and in what month were you born?” 

And that question was no help at all. 

And it went on and on. They played with Arody like he was a toy, turning him this way and that, fingering his holes, kissing his saggy belly and his mouth. He came in waves, over and over, as the witches made his body obey them like it was theirs. And once or twice they came close. 

“These letters,” Jack said, tracing the oldest scars on Arody’s body, the same ones Bright had found that first day. “R. O. D. Why were they carved into you?”

“They stand for my false name—“ Arody managed. 

_And my true one_ , he wanted to say. But he couldn’t. He wasn’t allowed to say that. It was too close to breaking the rules. And, in any case, for the next few moments he could barely talk. Barnabas had a fist in his ass, and Arody gurgled on it, the biting stretch making his cunt twitch and cum. He sobbed his pleasure as Bright whispered, into his ear: 

“Repent isn’t your name. We know that. What was the first thing you ever remember tasting?”

And on in that vein. Towaquippa sat and smoked, and Whippoorwill paced. 

And Arody came apart, over and over, as the witches probed him for the little burning secret in him, fucked him full and pressed into every crevice of him, desperate to find the name that would bind him to them. 

-

He didn’t cheat. He didn’t. But soon he’d come so many times that coming hurt, his whole body wrung to the point of exhaustion, rubbed completely raw. He knew they only had until sunup, and he needed them to hit on it. To guess right. So he began to work in the best clues. His mother’s name, hissed our fast. _‘Who loves you, my devil-puss?‘ ‘Mariayarrow. Mari-arrow. Mari-arrow-mari. Arrow.’_

His scars, the old ones. The letters. _‘What do you fear, honey?’ ‘Being carved up again, Goodman Barnabas. R. O. D. R. O. D.’_

Arrowdee. Arody. These stupid witches, these lovely fucks who just. Did not. Understand. He wished they would say it, would get it, but instead they spun him in circles, tonguing his cunt and fucking his rear hole. Making him sore and so tired, until he was moaning out his answers miserably. 

It was another two or three hours after that. Two or three hours of torment, until Bright, his own voice heavy with exhaustion, asked, “What’s your favorite taste, sweet?”

“Herbs,” Arody gasped out. “Herbs. Like yarrow. Yarrow.”

He was on his stomach now, rear in the air, holes exposed. Bright traced the letter-scars. He mouthed them into Arody’s neck. 

Yarrowdee. Arrowdee. 

Ar. Oh. Dee. 

“Oh,” he said, just like that. “Oh, it’s Arody. Little Dee Yarrow, our Arody—“

“Arody!” Barnabas hissed.

“Arody!” snarled Jack, like a violent, sated wolf. 

“Arody!” they chanted wildly, “Arody!” 

And the sky cracked into a storm, the ocean rolled. Towaquippa swore, and Whippoorwill let out a vicious whoop. And Arody, grateful, let his whole body collapse into the sand. The witches gathered him up. They pressed kisses to him, whispering his name. They hooked it into him, dragged _his_ soul close to _them_. 

May was saying it too. Binding him too. She had always known his name, but had kept it close until now. Now, she plainly did not want to lose him to the witches. So she bound him to her as well, with her first spell. And the prostrate form of the Colonel — Adam, Whippoorwill had called him — was stirring. 

“Arody,” he called out to him, cracking open an eye to cast his own binding on the tired little devil. “Arody. Come here and give some strength to me.”

-

He fell asleep on Adam’s cock. He had crawled to it, possessed, and fucked himself down onto it. The prone man held him weakly, and Arody felt Adam’s soul, his magic — warm and frothy and clear, but ragged, worn down to lace from having been subsumed for weeks in the much stronger soul of Whippoorwill — drawing strength out from his own scarred little body. He whimpered, and passed out. 

When he woke, Towaquippa had kept her bargain. She had forgiven all, and was gone. Arody was on his stomach, wrapped in a heap of torn shirts and coats and even May’s skirt, by a fire. Wanton cradled his left side, and Comeuppance stood over him, neighing softly into his hair. Arody was sore but warm. 

May was on the other side of the fire, in her petticoats, speaking softly to Jack and Adam. Jack had a hand in her shift, and she was breathing heavily as he massaged her breasts. 

Just beyond them, Barnabas was on his knees, fucking into someone. Whippoorwill. The other devil. The black moth. Clutching his handsomest witch, raking nails down his back as he shuddered and came on Barnabas’ cock. 

A shadow fell over Arody. It was Bright. Crouching over him. 

“Will believed you would come and save us,” he murmured, running a hand down Arody’s knobbly spine. “Sweet thing. He said he could see you helping us, bearing for us. Becoming strong for us. Until our coven could claim you.”

“What?” Arody croaked out. 

He had thought Whippoorwill was weak, and had no magic. 

Bright, as ever, seemed to read his thoughts. He smiled his private smile. 

“He isn’t so helpless as he let you and Towaquippa think he was. Not that he lied. He _was_ drained, you know, from rewriting history. And worried. He had magic enough to find you and to get us to Divine Providence. To cast a glamour on Adam. And to do a few other small things. And now he has enough to get us where we want to go, provided you tend to the rest of us, especially Adam, who still needs strength. Have you ever been to Veromenica, little one?”

Arody blinked up at him stupidly. 

“The land of freed slaves?” he managed. 

They had rebelled. Cast off their masters. Established the first and only free land in the world. 

Bright petted his hair gently. 

“That’s the one. I have always wanted to go. My mother was a slave. My father, her master, had her killed for witchcraft. But it was too late. She had taught me what she knew. Taught me to seek out spirits and bind them to me, to protect myself from the pain of my father’s lash. From his cruelty.”

Arody thought this over. 

“You found Whippoorwill,” he managed. 

Bright gave a small chuckle. “Found him? I saved him. He was born to Goody Smythe, and she was so frightened she tried to bash his head in with a rock. But mother and I knew what he was. We hid him, for a time, and then smuggled him from Divine Grace. And after that I did not see him for years. I contented myself with tiny spirits — there are many small ones, not many are impressive like you and Will, and almost none are so great as Towaquippa — well into my army days. And then I saw him again. He’d attached himself to Jack. I needed him then, and so did Adam and Barnabas, who had become my friends. So we called on him.”

“To kill the real Colonel,” Arody mumbled. 

Bright nodded. 

“He was going to start a revolution, you know. But only to help his sort, the wealthy and well-off. Really, the world should be thanking us. But they won’t. No matter. My conscience is clear. I can’t abide a slaveowner. Speaking of. Did you really destroy that horrible town?”

“Yes,” Arody said. “Most of it.” 

Bright lifted him up and cradled him properly. Pressed a kiss to his lips. Arody breathed in a wisp of that delicious soul. He still had a small piece of it in him that he hadn’t used up. A piece fit for a spell. But he could think of no spell to cast. He was warm and free and held and kissed. He needed nothing, for the moment. 

“Well done,” Bright breathed out. “Well done. We’ll make a fright of you yet, Sweetling.”

But now Barnabas called out, “Never! He’s too damned nice, that little honey-devil!”

“It’s so tiresome,” said Whippoorwill brattily. “Now bring him here. Let me look at him. If he’s going to be disgustingly nice, he can bounce on my cock while he’s at it.” 

Bright scowled, though this was no less than what he had done to Arody himself. But Arody let his forked tongue sneak out, wanting, tasting the air in the other devil’s direction. Everything was black and crackling, alive and powerful. Whippoorwill was tasting in Arody’s direction too. He gave a little trilling laugh as his soul perceived Arody’s. Devil to devil. Spirit to spirit. 

“Come taste me,” he commanded. “And let me taste you. It’s been so long since I made love to another one of us! Come here, Arody, and let us make you feel good!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Het? In my dirty porn? It’s likelier than you think 
> 
> ~~Sorry, pals, I just couldn’t kill May~~


	4. The Witches

In Veromenica, devils flooded the cities and towns. 

Mostly very minor devils. They were the spirits of trees or of beehives. That sort of thing. In Veromenica even devils could be free, so there devils came in droves. 

Yalagulo, the island’s most famous devil, was busy burning plantations on Rotandi. But he was a generous sort. The coven was permitted a house in his territory, high up in the mountains. It was stormy and perfect, very green there. 

And there their new little devil began to heal. 

Bright was relieved to see it happen. 

He knew the others cared for Arody. Covens were such intense, close networks that they had no choice but to care for each other. They only thrived by sharing their power, giving up their very souls to each other. 

But for Arody, he felt a bit more than caring. For Arody, he thought he might be completely in love. 

It was the way Adam felt for Whippoorwill. Something in Bright twisted and went very vulnerable at the mere thought of the witchling. Bright would feel all his protectiveness quicken, cresting in him, whenever he beheld the small spirit. Arody’s inhuman, eerie eyes. His pearl-gold claws. His lovely little gut, pouching above his sad little cock stub and soft, giving cunt. Bright didn’t mind that Arody carried the signs of Divine Providence’s cruelty on his body. He thought the little devil-spirit was very pretty nevertheless. Pretty and shy, quiet to a fault, ever-polite, with his tongue forever poking out like a small cat. Eager to be kissed and fondled. 

Arody, like Whippoorwill, was passed along between all of them. But when he had his choice he slept most often with Bright, in Bright’s bed. Bright’s cock fitted into him perfectly, filling up his hungry little mouth. He would suckle it until he dropped off to sleep, and then he would warm it in his sleep. He took such uncomplicated joy in sucking cock. Bright could drive it into his throat hard and fast enough to choke him, and Arody would just wriggle about in pleasure, moaning as he came from his untouched cunt. 

Some days they all did it. Not often. Whippoorwill was a demanding creature, and did not like to have all the attention elsewhere. Much less on Arody, who he seemed to regard with a mixture of fond protectiveness and utter irritation. But he also did not like Arody to have anything he did not, and so for some time the new witch May became his special project. 

Then the rest had tacit permission to fuck their little devil-child all they liked. Two or three would surprise him in the morning by waking him with cock, multiple witch cocks rubbing his pretty narrow cheeks. They could keep him come-drunk for hours, trading him between them as the rain spattered the roof and the day broke over the mountains. 

He sucked cock _so well_. Most devils and witches did it for power. Arody did it because he _loved_ it. When he had a cock in his little mouth his whole body would shake. He would bob on it so fiercely his big tits would jiggle. That was the best time to fuck him — and fully two men could fuck him in one hole, drive their cocks into the practiced, loose cunt and make him feel it. He would be reduced to a lovely mess. Wet, slippery, and still gasping for cock. Dazed for cock, no matter how much he got, with his tongue hanging out and begging for it, begging to suck them down and worship them. 

Now that they knew his name, they could summon up his soul. It was pale green, smelling of arsenic, tasting of power. Bright was sure his little sweetheart didn’t even know how much power. Arody was such an artless thing, he had to be taught nearly everything about himself. 

“You’re so perfect,” Bright would murmur into his hair of nights, as Arody obediently clenched his cunt around Bright’s cock, turning the pretty hole at once from slippery and loose to a perfect devil-puss. 

Bright pressed kisses to his collarbone, his swelling tits. Those long, delectable nipples. He was slowly teaching Arody to love being sucked and petted on those, to wriggle and beg to have firm hands roughly tending to the soft, engorged flesh of his breasts. 

Soon they would move on to making him enjoy a cock drooling cum all over his sweet little gut. Proof their little devil couldn’t just take souls, but could make them too. Could grow entirely new forms of life. 

But for now Bright was focused on slowly fucking the sloppy cunt, sucking along the full breasts. Licking Arody’s own name across these perfect tits, to make him hiccup and offer up his poison-rich power. 

Then Bright had to bite off a moan. He tasted it. Arody’s soul. So vivid, so strong. Pressing into him, making him dazed with its intensity and power. He wasn’t sure what he would do with the spell-power yet — they needed to fix the roof, so maybe that — but it was enough to have it. It made his whole body stiffen, pleasure light up his senses. Then he was coming, pumping his little sweetheart with enough cum to make Arody wail and clutch his soft little belly, tongue sticking out shamelessly as his small body shook and came in response. 

“Perfect,” Bright choked out. “Perfect, sweetheart. Such a perfect soul.”

His own was shredded and feathery from years of being sliced up to feed devils. Human souls could get like that. Some day, Bright knew, there would not be very much of it at all. Men could do without it, of course — some men even let theirs rot and get foul and nasty, for how little they used it properly — but still. Something would be missing. And he would no longer be of much use to his devils. 

Arody had sobbed when Bright had explained this to him. 

“No!” he’d cried. “No! I’ll still love you! And I’ll give you all the pieces I took, so you can last a bit longer! I don’t want you used up! I want you with me!”

Bright didn’t really let himself believe the child would be so good as all that. Not when he was a grown, vicious, strong spirit, like Towaquippa. Hell, even like Will. 

But then it was Arody, so who knew. Perhaps. 

-

May had always suspected she was a deviant. For one thing, she had never wanted to hurt her family’s devil. She had always hated how they treated him. It was disgusting. Foul. As a child, she had mostly cried over her own treatment — the whippings, the booming lectures she received for minor sins. But she had felt she deserved that treatment, too. 

For the worst sin. The sin of the whole colony. Another child, beaten and tortured, fucked and near-killed. Over and over. 

Arody had filled her nightmares for most of her life. 

But then as she grew, and as Arody grew, and began to show his use to the colony in new ways, he had started to fill other dreams. 

The year she bled, and was whipped for losing her innocence and becoming the sin of woman. That was the year. That year, she had also begun to go very light and fluttery in her sinful places, looking at Arody. His tempting hole, his magnificent round breasts and stomach. 

Even now, he was the reason she was here. Not the others. 

Oh, she liked them well enough. Especially Barnabas. He had a wicked wit, and their friendship was instant. Adam was quiet, thoughtful, and far kinder than any man she’d ever known, not that the standards for men had been so great in Divine Providence. Bright was intelligent, the eldest. A bit fatherly, but willing to curb his more patronizing impulses when he realized she had no patience for that. Jack was at first her least favorite — what a girl was supposed to do with a randy papist, she had no idea. 

But he had a bone-deep generosity. For he knew how aggressively jealous she could get, over Arody. 

Arody had his own room with Whippoorwill, but he didn’t always sleep there. He was theirs, their little devil to enjoy. And he enjoyed them in return, for if he was left alone, he was prone to nightmares. So soon enough they developed a routine for him. He was Bright’s every one night out of seven, and Jack’s the next night. Then Barnabas’, then hers, then Adam’s, then Will’s (on those nights the storms that shook the mountains would gain new energy. Trees would topple, and in their place new trees would grow at once). 

The seventh night was for anything Arody liked, was his choice. He had a boundless appetite, and would often choose everyone. But sometimes he would pick just one of them. May hated when it was not her. 

Jack, near-shyly, would always offer to share their little darling, if he was picked. 

“Love to see him eat cunt,” he’d confide cheekily, as Arody worked her open, dug his long, incredible tongue into her slit. She would cradle his head between her thighs and croon to him, feeling his power writhing inside her. Jack would be taking him all the while, pumping into him with sure strokes. Arody jerked in time to it, little moans reverberating into her. Eyes wide, face a mess of hiccuping drool and delight. 

Gone. He would be gone with need, with happy pleasure. May would pull back his head by the hair to get a look at him for a moment, just a moment, and would gasp at that, at how beautiful he looked. 

She could always feel it, when he would slice off little parts of soul. But she did not mind it. She alone knew what he had endured, all the pain he had suffered to get here. She alone had watched him suffer, and never helped him as she should. 

Her care for him had an edge of guilt, and an even stronger edge of obsession. Will would tease her relentlessly over it, whenever they had their nights together, scissoring into each other. 

“Oooh, imagine if I was _Arody_ right now!” he would say, with a wicked glint in his eye. And then he would change, shift into someone smaller and meeker and a bit plumper. Arody. But he could never get the eyes — demons couldn’t shift their eyes, apparently. Still, May would always crest around then. Will was elegant, but Arody — Arody was perfect. 

She would smack Will on the arm after, making him cackle. He was _such_ a bother. 

But he was right. She loved Arody. Will was a partner in magic and pleasure. But Arody was more. 

Her little love hardly ever put up resistance at being passed around. Seemed to enjoy it. But if he was tired or droopy, or wanted to pad out to the animal stalls behind the house and spent a night cuddling his children —

May dared any of them to try and keep him from doing as he pleased. She would become fierce and dogged, and the others would know not to fight. 

And she wound most of her spells around him — spells to cheer, to give courage, to rub away the scars and make them fade. 

“Oh!” he cried, when he realized she was doing it. “Oh, May!”

His eyes filled up with tears, and then he was embracing her, kissing her, lit up with shocked happiness. 

Hers at last. 

-

Jack had had a wife once, in Lietty. And a daughter, and two sons. 

Plague took them. Not even binding himself to a devil had saved them. That had only staved off some of their pain. 

Which was something. He didn’t regret doing it. 

Still, he had seen pregnancy before. So he was first to realize it, once a fuck finally took in Arody. 

Will, now Will would never let himself be bred if he didn’t want it. Will was sharp and dangerous as a knife — even kissing him would mean being clawed in hunger, would mean receiving the snap of that wicked tail across one’s bottom. Will did what he pleased and swelled when he pleased, and thus far, he always announced to them airily, absolutely none of them had merited the privilege of having their seed take in his perfect, tight devil cunt. 

Arody seemed not to realize he could prevent it. So soon he changed. His smell, his taste became riper. His eyes had that shining look Jack’s wife’s had always taken on, and his skin too. His hair became sleeker, softer, and his little gut felt more round and taut. 

“Ah, my well-bred devil-puss,” Jack finally told him, on a private, stormy night that was to have been theirs, but that had somehow resulted in both him and Arody tending the animals, brushing Comeuppance’s silky coat, and Wanton’s too. 

Wanton was aquiver, yipping even more madly than usual. Comeuppance was alert. Jack suspected they could both tell what he could. 

But his comment completely passed Arody by. The boy was licking his hell-horse’s coat, sighing happily. He was growing a bit taller with how well they fed him, and now the top of his head managed to even clear the top of the horse. 

Jack sighed. Patted his hair gently. 

“He tastes nice,” Arody murmured, words thick against his child’s tawny-gold coat. “He’s hot, Jack. Like you.”

Jack let his hand dip down to cup Arody’s belly. 

“And this one?” he said, tenderly. 

Arody blinked. 

“W—what?” he stammered. 

He had the look Jack’s wife had had with the first one. Nan had looked like that, more afraid and startled than pleased. The men were always pleased, too-proud of themselves. But those who had to carry the child always knew better. 

Jack ended up holding him, comforting him. They sat huddled in the hay, Wanton wrapped around them and the horse touching his nose to Arody’s shaking back. The boy was usually naked, but today the summer storms had turned cold, and Jack had wrapped him in an old shirt. Now it was damp with Arody’s frightened sweat, as the boy cried in Jack’s arms. 

“There were others,” he confessed, sobbing heavily. His little face was covered in snot. He was gulping up big breaths. Jack rubbed soothing circles on his back, slow and even. “Thou dost not know how many. B-but they were taken, so I could bear the animals instead. I do not know if they would have been human or devil—“

“My da met one once,” Jack said thoughtfully. “She was bound to one of the popes. She was both. Yours could be both.”

This did not reassure Arody. 

“I don’t even know if I want it,” he forced out. “Jack! I don’t know!”

He cried harder than ever. Jack kissed his forehead, and tasted how his big, almond-sweet soul trembled with shame and fear. 

“Aye, well. Let’s not tell the others, then. Not yet. They won’t notice, ‘cept for Will and maybe Bright, and they won’t say a word unless you do. They’ll just think you’re finally fattening up with the way we feed you. So, no, my puss, you take a month and think it over. And if you don’t want it at the end of a month, you tell me, and we’ll put you to sleep for a bit, nice and easy, and I’ll spell it out of you. No trouble. But it’s your decision, my love.”

Arody nodded tearfully into his shoulder. His body still shook a bit, but now his crying was subsiding. He hugged Jack and hiccuped, nodding over and over. 

“My decision?” he rasped out eventually. 

“That’s right, puss,” Jack said gently. 

“A-and if I want it?”

“Then we plan for a babe, puss,” Jack said easily, and pulled him in closer. “Would do some of these scapegraces good, my love, to take on the tasks of fatherhood.”

-

Barnabas hadn’t wanted to touch the boy at first. 

Will found it hilarious that Barnabas thought him a boy. Will thought Barnabas was a boy. 

He wasn’t. Slaves never really had definite ages. No one bothered to note the days slaves were born, not for him, not for Arody. Not even for Adam. 

But now they weren’t slaves. Barnabas picked the heart of winter for his birthday, and declared himself twenty— 

(“You’re seventeen if you’re a _day_ ,” Will said nastily. 

“You’re only twenty-one,” Bright pointed out to him, and received a hiss and a dizzying slap with the tail.)

—and he coaxed Arody into picking a day as well. Arody chose a day he had been out tending his children with Jack, for some reason. Barnabas tried not to be too hurt or jealous over that. 

“‘Twas a special day,” the little devil said shyly, as he and Barnabas walked through the forest one misty morning. Barnabas was his partner in exploring, just as adventurous as Arody. Together they’d found a cave network, a frightening ravine, a colony of lizards as long as their arms, several many smaller lizards (the devils liked to guzzle these up like snacks), and birds of all stripes. Today they were going to the beautiful bluff overlooking all the rest of Veromenica, from where they could both see down to the white city of the free, perched like a jewel next to the sea. 

“I—I think I must be sixteen,” mumbled the little devil now, carefully stepping over gnarled roots. He carried himself a bit differently, Barnabas thought. He was rubbing his stomach a great deal, in little bursts. No wonder, that. They all liked to bring him snacks, not just lizards but enormous hibiscuses and green-spotted lace bugs and tiny frogs and banana leaves. He was starting to show the extra feeding, was nicely plump in his thighs and his round little ass, and fatter in his middle and tits. 

Barnabas palmed the ass, enjoying its new heft as they walked. Arody let him, sighing and smiling a bit, and coming close so the groping could give way to Barnabas’ arm slung possessively over his shoulder. 

“I was about four when they took me,” he added now, softly.

“Bet they weren’t any nicer just ‘cause you were four,” said Barnabas, a bit unthinkingly. 

Arody nodded, breathing out hard. 

He got certain whims sometimes, to talk about what had been done to him. Barnabas never pressed for them. But he didn’t pretend he couldn’t guess, either. He could guess all too well. He’d grown up on Rotandi, on a plantation, just another crop for the Colonel to profit from. 

Nobody had been too nice to him when he was four, either. 

“They said they wanted to kill me,” Arody confided now. “They taught me I was a devil, and devils should be killed. But were many nights I wondered, given all they did to me, why they didn’t do more. Cut off my head. Pierce me on a knife, and let me bleed out. There must have been some way. I am not strong—“

“Honey, you’re strong,” Barnabas said, snorting. But he made Arody stop walking so he could pull him in and kiss his forehead. The tear tracks on his cheeks. 

“They didn’t want to kill you. They never want to kill you, not if they can use you.”

Arody nodded, still crying. He wrapped his arms around Barnabas’ middle and held on tightly, turning his face up to ask for more kisses. Barnabas gave them, and let the waving, forked tongue explore his own face. Lick his lips, his chin, the stark angles of his cheekbones. Arody needed that comfort. 

“What do you want, pup?” Barnabas asked him gently. “You want to suck my cock?”

Arody flushed, nodding at once. He never turned down a cock in his mouth. He was pulling back and letting his tongue hang out, eagerly, practically vibrating from need already. Barnabas slipped a finger in his bare cunt and discovered it was unsurprisingly wet. 

This gave Arody pause, however. 

“W—wait,” he managed, looking pained. It seemed to take effort for him to draw his tongue in. He curled in on himself, stepping back a bit, as if he had to put distance between them or risk dropping to his knees and lunging for for cock right there. “I—I want you to train me, Barnabas. Like you said.”

Barnabas winced a bit. 

‘Train’ was one of those words he didn’t like. It was ugly to him. He’d been trained. He figured Arody probably had been too. This wasn’t like that. He had no interest in making it like that. 

“Teach you,” he corrected. 

Arody nodded obediently. 

“Teach me,” he echoed. “Please.”

He didn’t need Barnabas to do it. Will could teach him. Did teach him. Will called it training, so that was where Arody had picked up that little quirk, because Will was a real shit sometimes. But Barnabas thought of it as teaching. That was all. 

Barnabas might be the youngest of the witches. And a former slave. But he and Adam, they had been teaching themselves all they could about witchery since they were small. 

They had been slaves once, but they had been slaves dreaming fervently of Yalagulo. The most powerful devil in these parts, the one born of a hundred thousand slaves’ yearning need for freedom. 

Their mother’s sister, Tante Cattie, had birthed him. She had been a Rotandi slave, like them, but this had been long before Barnabas and Adam were born. She had kissed their mother, a toddler then, and pressed a spell of luck into her brow, for her and her children. Then she had promptly escaped rather than see her devil-baby put to death by the overseers. Now she was the Governor of Veromenica, and lived in a big house in the valley below with her other children, seven strikingly perfect devil-daughters. Adam and Barnabas’ mother, who had used up the luck spell on fleeing with their younger sister five years ago, also lived with her. But Yalagulo was a jealous devil, and did not brook witches pledged to other demons in his house, among his family. So their coven, Will’s and Arody’s, had had to move up to the top of the mountain. 

Still, since Tante Cattie held sway over even Yalagulo, they took tea with her punctually once a month. She found Will extremely impolite, and whenever he irritated her she would make her enormous lizard-familiar sit on his tail until he was good. But Arody she had a plain fondness for. 

“Barney, you come here,” she always said imperiously, drawing him away from the others with a snap of her black fingers. “You come here. I’m going to teach you to help that little devil, Barney. I like that little devil. He reminds me of my own.”

Some of her lessons were uncomfortable things to discuss with one’s aunt. And she would always make him use up real soul-power, the reserves he’d taken from Will and Arody, until he was drained. On his knees below her second-story verandah, drained raw from scratching her spell-inventions into the dirt, his hands bleeding out blood and magic at once. 

“Why can’t Adam do this?” Barnabas would occasionally whine out, at this point. 

“Your mama’s light skinned favorite? No. He’s got plenty of fortune already. You’re the one I’ll make indispensable to that little devil. Now shut up. You have spells to learn. Again.”

“I didn’t even want to touch him,” Barnabas would mumble out. “I was going to let him alone, I swear I was, Tante Cattie.” 

“But you didn’t, did you?” Tante Cattie would snap, black eyes flashing. “No, Barney was a big man! Rescuing the little pretty and then fucking him good. Just like a man. But now you have to be a partner to him. That’s the piece you all forget. Now practice it again. Right this time.” 

So Barnabas knew things the others didn’t. Things not even known to Will, who after all was only twenty-one, and therefore sort of a baby himself, for a devil. 

He took Arody once they were on the bluff. He found a cool white stone, large enough for Arody to suck and not accidentally swallow, but devoid of any hint of living thing. Just a blank hollow, that wouldn’t feed the devil. After Barnabas spelled it clean he fed it to Arody, who whimpered to have his tongue stoppered up by such emptiness. 

But he didn’t fight. He stayed on hands and knees, as directed, eyes alert as he stared down at the green beauty of the free island. 

Barnabas fingered his ass a little wistfully — Arody had a perfect ass, and if he didn’t have Tante Cattie’s judgmental voice in his head, he would have been fucking that ass all the time — and slid into Arody’s cunt instead. 

Arody clenched on instinct. 

_Fuck_ , that was good. 

But no. No. Barnabas let his breath out in a hiss, shuddering at the nice squeeze, and then rubbed Arody’s back. 

“None of that, honey,” he murmured. “It’s alright. You’re not gonna need to be that tight. We’ll fill you up, Arrow Dee.”

At the name, the little devil’s soul surged up to him to meet his fingers. Barnabas wrapped himself in the unending power and then traced his spells out on Arody’s back, black magic spells, strong and potent, sweet as anything. 

He heard the rustle when the spirit-snakes came. Little forest devils, tiny ones compared to Arody. They could take any form, but he made them snakes, fat and wriggling. They slithered up, bypassing his knees, and then they crawled up Arody’s plump legs and thighs. 

Snicked their slippery, powerful way into his cunt. Barnabas groaned at the feel of them, live, slippery magic pulsing in next to his cock. Arody gave a wail, making the bluff itself shake. His little cunt quivered, as the wild slips of tiny living magic forced their way in. A mass of spirit-snakes stuffing up his cunt. He shook and shook, little body trembling. 

Barnabas didn’t stop calling them. Not until Arody was completely full of new magic. Tiny souls, little demons, but so many of them that it was a fair bit of power. Power the devil was helpless to access with his tongue, which was still stoppered up by the white stone. 

“Alright, pup,” Barnabas told him tenderly then, still stroking his trembling back. “Now, can you feel it? I know you’re all scarred up down there, baby. Scarred up all the way to your womb. But you got magic there too, pup. You can taste down there too. Can you taste those little souls? Take ‘em in.”

He felt it when, with a grunt, Arody pulsed around him. His scarred, hurt cunt was waking up. Arody started fucking back on the cock in him, on the mass of writhing tentacles. Started milking out the power in a new way. Not with tongue. With cunt. Arody sucked up the raw magic, fucked it into himself, and new flowers burst over the bluff as he shrieked his pleasure. 

Barnabas kept tracing spells on him. Spells to guide him, to direct the new magic his cunt took in. He sent it to Arody’s backside, coaxing it into working right, rubbing it into the slowly growing tail there. 

Arody’s tail was silky, with long red-black fur. It was only about six inches long now. But every time they did this it grew a bit more. It grew and waved itself eagerly, like a puppy’s. Whenever Barnabas stroked it, Arody would come in waves, feeling pleasure in a whole new way. 

Barnabas pressed a kiss to his back. 

“We’ll do your cock next, honey,” he promised him. 

-

Adam was really the one to blame for the whole affair. 

“That means you get all the credit for it, darling,” Will would always purr. 

Will always saw things sideways, tilted, and upside-down. That was one of the many traits Adam fervently loved about him. 

He knew he was Will’s favorite, too. He generally was the favorite. Their mother’s favorite. Tolland’s. 

Tolland owed it to him to like him at least a bit, though. He was, after all, Adam’s father. That was why Adam had been allowed to work in the house, polished-up, in the gleaming coats of a footman. While Barney had been left outside, in the dirt, working until his hands bled. 

Barney was handsome, but not in the right way. Barney didn’t have the Colonel’s pale eyes, milky skin, or wavy hair. Barney didn’t have the favor. But Barney was smarter. When they’d both been brought to Audenlea, the most prized and expensive of the Colonel’s possessions, they went with the warning their mother had left them with, before she’d made her escape. 

_Don’t trust him. Not even you, Adam. He may be your daddy, but he likes being your master better. And don’t you ever tell him about that luck spell we’ve got. It’s not much. I’m taking most of it, for me and your sister. But I’m leaving you a piece. When he turns on you, that will get you clear of it._

Adam had never told about the luck spell. But he’d forgotten not to trust the Colonel. In Audenlea, the laws were different. Men couldn’t be slaves on account of their race. The only slaves were poor folk and devils. And he and Barney would not have been poor, had they decided to stay. He and Barney turned heads, all the fine ladies desperate to patronize them. To fund whatever they liked, put them up in a nice house, make them respectable. The brothers could have stayed there easily, especially Barney. The wealthy of Audenlea longed to help free Barney, he was so handsome to them. And the Colonel, he would have had no legal right to either of them, had they done as Barney wanted and simply run off to one of their new patrons. 

But the Colonel had said, light, “You wouldn’t leave me, would you? You’re my boy, Adam.”

His boy who slept and ate in the kitchens, away from his milk-white daughters. His boy who still carried his brand behind his ear. His boy who he ordered whipped whenever Adam wasn’t smiling, and who he had never freed. 

But Adam was so stupid. All he had thought, then, was that he was still given the gift of an orange every holiday (Barney got nothing), and taught to read (Barney had had to teach himself). He wore fine clothes (Barney had two rough-hewn shirts and a single pair of trousers). Sometimes the Colonel even doted on Adam, or at least he did until he got bored of it. 

The Colonel promised that, if they returned home with him, he would set them free. Both brothers. They could be freedmen, with a few acres and a horse apiece, like Lieutenant Bright, the black man who served in the Colonel’s regiment. They could go home to the colonies, and work to buy their friends from the Colonel, even. 

It had seemed so _reasonable_. Barney had mistrusted it, but Adam had seen no reason for his father to lie to them. He’d convinced Barney to return. 

Of course, once they were back in the new land, the Colonel had not freed them. Here he owned them again. Here his power was absolute. He’d laughed at Adam’s upset, as though the whole thing had been a marvelous joke. 

It had been the worst moment of Adam’s life. Worse still when he’d seen his brother’s rage and despair. Barney had beaten him that night, and Adam had let him. He had gotten them into this. 

He got them out, too. When Barney was not looking, he used the luck spell. It carved up the ground in the stable they’d been housed in, making a line. Adam, bruised and bleeding, had followed it as it grew. Led him. All the way to the edge of town, where there was a ruined cottage. Bright was there, tense, looking over a man who had iron manacles on his hands, a bloody back like Adam’s, and a devil on his shoulder. 

Black as sin, as rage, as power. And so pretty. Adam’s heart had flipped in his chest. 

Whippoorwill had looked up at Adam and smiled. 

“Darling,” he’d crooned out, tongue flicking up to taste the air around Adam. “How lovely. Now I can have three. You need at least three for a proper coven.”

The only thing Adam asked from him was that Will help him kill the Colonel. That was it. The one spell he cared about. But carrying it off took months, months of all four of them feeding Will, bringing him little life forces, letting him take their own. The Colonel was a wealthy man, important. He was meant to be more than Adam’s father or master. He was meant to be the founding father of a whole nation. Killing him would be rewriting history. 

The happiest moment of Adam’s life was when he got to drive a knife into the man’s belly. They trussed him up and carved out his bowels. All but Will. Will was skinny and wasted from the exertion of keeping Tolland quiet and the rest of the battalion dead asleep. He could barely stand. He only managed it, Adam thought, because it meant licking Tolland’s soul from his tear-streaked, dumb face. 

All of it. The entire essence of the man, just enough to keep him going and power their escape. Will had plans for their escape. He could sense another devil not too far off, a young and fresh one. A devil he told Adam they had to have. If they wanted to get away with it, get clear to Veromenica, they would need to have the power of that little devil. 

Tolland’s soul would have just enough magic to locate the creature. 

Will still gagged when he was done devouring it. 

“He’s nasty,” Will had complained, shaking like a leaf, evidently struggling not to vomit. 

“No surprise there,” Adam had said, satisfied. Grinning like a loon as he watched Tolland choke and sputter and slowly die. 

But what a Pyrrhic victory. Even with a new soul, Will had been so weak. Adam had had to beg for a greater devil still, Towaquippa, the chief of the hunt and the stars, to save Will. 

She had a sense of humor, the chief did. She bound Will to _Adam_ , folded them together like a little soul-braid, and they had stayed that way for weeks, blindly leading the others to the little devil Will had prophesied might get them clear of the whole mess. 

Arody did. For that alone, Adam was grateful to him. Arody really had the credit for their new lives. Adam the blame, and Arody the triumph. That felt right to Adam. Felt fair. 

Adam’s soul was now tatters, of course, and even Will didn’t want to take too much more of it. Only devil souls could be replenished. Human souls were finite, and Adam — he was barely twenty, but he was close to tapped out. That was what it had taken, to make things right with the Colonel. 

He hated himself for it. Will wouldn’t take his soul any more, for Will liked him too much to do that, but he would do other things Adam asked for. Fuck him hard, make Adam feel it. Whip Adam. Barney thought he was crazy to want those things. That being a slave had messed up his mind. Maybe it had. But Adam hadn’t been a slave like Barney had, and maybe that was the trouble. Even now that he’d rid them of the Colonel, he still felt the need to make up for the years of comparative fortune. He needed his life to feel balanced. Needed to be dominated and hit, but this time on his command. 

This time with Will pressing fluttery kisses to him after, crooning over what a nice, submissive little witch his Adam was. 

Besides, sometimes Adam played the other role. 

Not with Will. Never with Will. Whipping his Will, Poor Will, Whippoorwill, would have made the bile rise in his throat. 

But Arody took it beautifully. 

Adam didn’t even need to ask for it. The little devil tasted the black desire in him, during a night he passed in Adam’s bed, warming his cock for him while Will sated Bright and May in the next room. Adam never would have acted on his mad need to dominate otherwise, for half the time he despised the urge. It felt like something he must have inherited from Tolland. 

But Arody, though his eyes were wide and frightened, had just breathed in hard. He’d kept sucking cock, letting it soothe him, and after Adam had cum he had bravely crawled up to look him in the eye. He had said, softly, “Thou cannot know this, but I’ve suffered worse things that what thee dreams of for me. Canst thou promise not to truly hurt me, Adam?”

He always spoke like this, stiffly, formally, like a religion-mad Striker cultist, when he was full of emotion. Adam, ashamed, had promised at once never to hurt him. He would stop whenever Arody liked. In truth, Arody didn’t need to do this for him at all. Adam had so little to give him in return. 

But the promise had calmed the devil. Made the tension drain from his shoulders. They had ridden down to the city the next day, to the market, for Adam to buy clothespins, gloves, and lambskin sheaths, and for Arody to pick out the rest of the tools. Lengths of spelled rope, which would hold but not chafe. A heavy flogger, which would hit but never scar. 

On the way back they had stopped at Adam’s mother’s house, and she had fallen on Adam with cries of joy. But her sister, Tante Cattie, had eyeballed him. Seeing through to his core. She always did. 

He had been quite ready to give things up at once. But then Tante Cattie had cracked a grin. Wicked. A bit vicious. 

As Adam’s mother, sister, and cousins had fussed over Arody, Tante Cattie had said, “Self-absorbed boy! As if a spirit would ever agree to suffering with no reward in it! Do you think he does this for you? You, who have barely the power to cast even a single spell these days?”

She’d let out a little cackle. 

“It’s not for you, Adam. You think you’re the only one who needs to work things out? No. You’re just lucky. You always were. I think you got the most of my luck spell, boy. Now what do you say to that?”

“Th—thank you, Tante Cattie,” he’d stammered out. 

She’d nodded, satisfied. 

“That’s right. Now go and teach the little devil-child to conquer his fear. Stay clear of his stomach. And have ready the juice of the big aloe leaves in my garden. That will keep him from scarring.”

Adam did as ordered, and went to cut some aloe leaves. 

That came in useful, the aloe. 

On the nights when Arody was his, he would wind rope right about his little wrists, work it over the rafters of his room, and then draw it down the devil’s back. It had to lie snug between the plump asscheeks, squarely cutting over the pucker and coming to rub between the cunt lips. Adam would knot it there, to make a hard nub that left the devil drooling, fucking down wantonly. He’d knot it on the stomach, too, adding another rope, so he could wind them both around Arody’s tits and over his shoulders, then use them to bind the devil’s arms. Then his legs, in a spread position, before all the ropes were tossed over the rafters again. Pulled tight and secure, and wound to an iron ring Adam had nailed firmly into the floor. 

Then Arody made a beautiful sight. Swinging before the fire, tits and belly hanging low, skin goosebumped with anticipation. Adam always left his little tail free, for he admired Barney’s work on it too much to truss it up. It would wag frantically, all nerves, until Adam pulled on his gloves and petted it soothingly. 

When Arody calmed, sniffling but obedient, Arody would migrate down to the cunt. Adam would press around it, gauging its state almost clinically. It would inevitably be going wet around the rope, Arody whining. The devil couldn’t move in this position, but he would try to swing himself enough to fuck down on the rope knot nevertheless. This would leave his fat little gut and swollen, tied-up tits shaking beneath him, sheened in sweat. Arody’s tongue would be curling out mindlessly, frantically, trying to reach down. To get at the building want in his tortured little pussy, quivering around the hard knot. But still, Adam knew, horribly empty. 

Adam would go to his desk and get a clothespin, and this he would pin right on Arody’s tongue. 

Their little devil would go _insane_. Thrashing, shaking. Their windows were wax paper for this reason. Arody would have broken glass. Adam would watch him, satisfied, as his sensitive tongue curled and waved, assaulted by a mere clothespin. 

“None of that,” Adam would chide. “Be still. You can take more than that.”

Arody would subside, sobbing. But nodding too. And he never pulled his tongue in. He always kept it out, like a good little devil-puss. Willing to take more. 

Two pins. Three. Four. Adam would add them to his nipples, too, to see Arody scream and writhe. And get wetter. So wet his juices would drip around the knot, pool in the bowl Adam placed under Arody’s tormented little cunt. The air would be hot with his almond smell. Adam would keep at it until Arody was just pins from the tip of his tongue to his lips, and drooling, having come so often he was just a trembling little mess. 

And all that without feeding him a hint of soul. All that from nothing but — but careful pain. A little discomfort. His big black eyes would stare up at Adam and Adam could always tell, could always see when fear would rise up in the devil and he would seem about to quit. To cry out. To let loose the word — _Freedman! Freedman!_ — which would force Adam to stop. 

But no. Arody never said it. Instead, Adam would behold the enormous courage of Arody. The moment when the devil would calm himself. Hiccup himself quiet. Decide not to call it off, but to _trust_. 

Adam, who knew what it was to surrender like that, who knew the danger and the love it took, would be overcome. Cock hard, heart near-broken with admiration. 

“Good, Arody,” he would say, caressing the lovely tail. Making Arody cry out again. “Good, you brave little soul.”

Not a little soul at all. A great big one, a magnificent one. One that Adam could not touch, could not taste directly without risking his own soul. But that was alright. On to the next game. He wanted that bowl set below Arody’s cunt to catch even more juices. To be filled up to the brim. Almond-arsenic devil essence, magical and potent. 

He liked to coax out as much as he could. So he would retreat to his desk again. Loose his cock from his trousers, and slide a lamb skin sheath over the straining head. 

And he would pick up the flogger. 

He loved the noises Arody made when hit. The shocks of force in the air. Everything in the room would rattle. The bees and butterflies and firebugs in their garden, just beyond the window, would rise up in a confused cloud, commanded to swarm up and cover the walls, leaving everything pulsing, a hell of wild life and total power. 

He knew Arody was still with him, still trusting him, because they never attacked him. They just buzzed obligingly, waiting. Waiting as Adam brought the flogger down on the plump bottom. 

“Count it out, Arody.”

It was hard to do, with his tongue all caught. But Arody would do it. Would jerk at each hit, crying out. Voice muffled and lisping, but his cunt dripping more and more slick into the bowl. 

“O-one! T-two! Th-three! F— _ugh_ — four!”

Until his bottom was completely red, swollen and hot to the touch. Sometimes Adam would swing from below and catch his tits, too. Careful of his stomach. It never did not to listen to Tante Cattie. By the time he was done, Arody’s cunt would be so slick and hot and ready to be fucked that just pulling aside the rope and touching his cockhead to it would make the little devil shriek and come once more, completely out of his head. 

Adam wouldn’t pause. Would fuck into him, into the slippery, welcoming cunt. He would stroke Arody’s sensitive tail as he fucked him, and sometimes pull aside the bit of rope over his pucker.

“Fuck yourself there,” he’d command then, slicking that ring up with some of Arody’s sloppy cunt-wet. “Come on. I want to see you.”

Arody’s sobs would become sobs of gratitude. His tail was just as sensitive as his tongue, and Adam knew it was a double-pleasure for him to be ordered to fuck his own ass with it. The writhing length would obey the command, plunging into Arody’s back channel, forceful enough for Adam to feel it through Arody’s walls. By then, Adam himself would be close to coming. Fucking the little devil hard enough to swing him to and fro, his little body going numb but for his tortured tongue and deliciously full holes. 

Adam would come so hard, knowing this, taking his pleasure from this, that he’d be in danger of blacking out. He would have to steady himself on the plump little ass, kneading it. Watching Arody fuck himself, as ordered. Fuck and fuck and not stop until Adam gave him permission to. 

When the bowl was full, Adam would let his cock slip out of the rubbed-raw little cunt. Pick up the bowl. Drink it down. 

Power would flood him, bright and immense. For a moment, his tattered soul would feel whole. And when the wholeness receded he would at least have the echo, the glimmer of power. Enough to cast a spell or two. And all without risking that Arody might accidentally take some of his own soul in the throes of their passion. 

“Alright, my pet,” Adam would say then, “You can stop.”

And the little devil would gratefully stop fucking himself, now so wrung-out and over-stimulated that he would be gasping, crying out thanks just to be allowed to stop. 

Before he cut Arody down, Adam would rub aloe into his sore spots, and loose the clothespins from his tits and tongue. Stroke that comfortingly, as he had stroked the tail. Rub away the little devil’s tear tracks, too. And praise him. Praise him for being so strong, and enduring so much. 

Then Arody would be freed and wrapped up snug in blankets, taken to bed and rocked, as he hiccuped and calmed, all drowsy and sated. Arody would fall asleep with no trouble, without a hint of nightmares. 

Sometimes even with a pretty smile on his face. 

Some nights, as the bees and butterflies and fire-bugs streamed back to their garden, a black moth would detach itself from the profane procession. Whippoorwill would flash into being, claim a kiss from Jack, and press a kiss to Arody. 

“Do you like him, darling?” he would murmur, forgetting that he had meant to let Adam take credit for Arody’s place in their life. “Isn’t he nice, in his way? I knew he would suit you all.”

“I love him,” Adam would say quietly, and mean it.


	5. The Devils

Whippoorwill would not precisely say he loved the boy. 

If asked, he would say that he loved sticking his cock in the well-trained sloppy puss, in the tight back hole. Down Arody’s throat. 

A good throat, that. Sex to their kind was like an especially nice form of breathing — necessary, and preferably constant. But Arody‘s quivering little mouth and throat, warm and wet, gave the act new meaning. He was an utter cockslut, sucking like it was an act of worship. Fucking his head up and down a cock roughly, hungrily, desperate to taste his partner. 

_But that is nothing,_ Whippoorwill always told himself snidely. _I could get a human to do that for me any time. He only does it because my humans taught it to him, anyway._

Though it had to be said that he also loved fucking the boy’s ass, and borrowing Adam’s trick of making Arody fuck his own tail in alongside Will’s cock. That wasn’t something one could do with a human. Nor would a human tongue eat cunt quite so hungrily as Arody’s did, and Will tended to make Arody eat his cunt every chance he got. 

Adam sometimes stood over them, directing. Ordering Arody, playing gloved fingers into his messy snatch as Arody pleased Will’s. Training the younger devil to get all the spots Will liked best. Meanwhile, Barnabas had trained Arody to kiss very prettily, and Jack had a mania for getting Arody to give the loveliest tit-fucks, with those nice pillowy tits. Bright, of course, was responsible for nearly everything else, even for the sinful moans of joy the little witchling gave when he licked Will’s back pucker, sensitive tongue overcome by even that filthy act. 

No, all these gentle pleasures weren’t just Arody. They were the lessons Will’s witches imparted on him in those first few months. Will had led them to a new devil, a blank canvas, a meek, sweet, downtrodden little innocent. Ripe for picking. For taking and fondling, spoiling and despoiling. Just waiting, inside his vivid, poison-sweet little soul, to be completely ruined for anyone but Will and his witches. To belong to them, heart and soul, bound by name and by his own guileless devotion. 

He was, in that sense, quite perfect for Will’s purposes. ‘Love’ therefore didn’t need to come into it. ‘Love’ had little to do with it. Will had been a wild, solitary spirit for many years before assembling his coven, near-feral, a creature of woods, collecting what soul-power he could from heedless travelers. This had made him cut a sorry sight. Little wonder that greater devils, devils who kept covens full of other devils, like Yalagulo, like Towaquippa, has always seen Will as something of a joke. 

It was true — he’d never carried off a great spell before. 

But now he had. He had rewritten history. And now he had his own coven-devil. An apprentice. 

As an apprentice, he was far more work than Will had expected. Arody scored top marks in the bedroom, and so long as his hungry mouth, cunt, pucker, and tail were pleasured, he could sometimes manage to mumble out a proper spell. Spells every devil should know. The spells to summon a black rat to fetch things. The spells to make garden shrubs sprout green shrubby legs become green shrubby donkeys. The spells to steal the dreams of city virgins and use them to polish the kitchen crockery to a gleam. 

But Arody didn’t like what he deemed ‘cruel’ spells, refusing to hiss spells of vengeance and violence on the basis that he had no current use for them. And he would not do proper changeling spells, the spells that would alter his form. At first, for months, he would simply dissemble, claim he had to do chores (as if that wasn’t for sad little humans), or insist on running off to the stable to see his children. 

But eventually he came out with it. 

“If my form changes,” he said, a bit miserably, “Then what happens to the one inside me?” 

“If it’s a proper devil, it will be fine,” Will said, waving a hand. 

“But what if it’s a human?” Arody asked, eyes fearful. 

“Then it dies,” Will admitted, not really seeing the issue. “But you can always make a new human.”

This had been the wrong answer. Arody had flatly refused to be a real changeling until the child was born, and Will, who had been looking forward to being the powerful devil-teacher, the senior devil, magnanimous and knowing, had fallen into a rage and spat a number of unconscionable things. 

Reminded Arody that he’d lost children before — Will had tasted it on him. That with his sloppy, greedy cunt, there would be another babe soon enough anyway. 

And then of course Arody had cried. 

Oh, it was horrific. 

Will had cursed cows and given pretty girls spots, caused several bad cases of minor stomachache in the town of Rowacath and once made an Audenlea lord believe he was a chicken. He had even murdered a brute, and changed the course of history. 

He had always believed he would not mind it, the next time he managed to make someone cry. 

It was nauseating and anxiety-inducing. At once, he worried for what the witches would say (Adam would take his side, but how horrible that would be — then he himself would be upset with Adam), and then he worried for what the animals would say (and he had such plans for Wanton! His conscience said he owed Towaquippa a demon child, after all, and a demon child demanded a demon sire). And then he thought of what that awful, frightening Tante Cattie would say. 

She would be sure to tell Yalagulo. Handsome, enormous Yalagulo. Yalagulo who had met a small Whippoorwill, crying in the wood, and petted him. Held him. Put him on his back. 

Taught him to love taking cock. 

Because Yalagulo was so great, his power so stunning, Will had begged to have his child. But Yalagulo had just laughed at that, for he had entire towns full of children. 

So then Will had begged to join his coven. But Yalagulo had tasted his soul and said, easily, “No, no. That’s not your future. Some devils aren’t meant to be more than that, but not you. There’s another little one that needs you, Poor Will. Or can’t you taste it?”

He had. Not always. But faintly, here and there. The sweet-poison taste of a little devil in pain, always a bit out of sight. Always unreachable. From the moment of his first spell, Will had always been able to close his eyes and see Arody in his future. 

It had moved him, and honored him, that Yalagulo could see it too. His secret, cherished bit of prophecy. That someday he would not be alone. 

Some devils, cruel devils, the ones who drove him from their cities and set their witches to manipulating the people into hunting him for sport — they had scoffed at Poor Will putting on airs, pretending he could have his own proper coven-devil. Devils like Gentleman Toppit, who was born of the greed of the merchant traders, and who Whippoorwill did not like. The Lady of Dancing Mice, who was born of sea-madness, and almost as bad as Gentleman Toppit. 

_Oh, I must warn Arody about them,_ he thought, a bit distractedly, as Arody still quietly cried. 

And then he stopped thinking that, because he was back to his guilt. 

They were in his chamber. Technically it was his and Arody’s, the room for the devils, the largest and hottest room in the house, on the upper story, beneath the eaves. But in practice it was just Will’s room. When Arody was not crawling eagerly into other people’s beds, quietly and patiently waiting for the caresses he so loved, he was curled up with his children in their stable. So, most of the time, his bed was empty. 

But now he had crawled into it, shoulders shaking, face wet. As if he were frightened, as if he thought Will would make him change shape against his own will. 

Will frowned. Brought a long black nail to his mouth, and bit it, tasting his own roiling guilt in his soul. It made his soul even stormier than usual, an unpleasant sensation. 

The worst bit was, Arody wasn’t even making noise. When he was frightened, he went quiet, as dumbly terrified as he had been when they’d first met him. 

Quiet and pliable. When Will crawled into his little cot and made him part his knees, Arody didn’t fight it. He just let his big eyes go blank and dead, as if he were far away. 

“Come back!” Will gasped out, unable to help himself. “I won’t hurt you, Arody!”

Arody blinked. Something in the watery eyes shifted, just a bit. Coming back. 

Will exhaled in relief. 

Then he sat between the little legs, not so scarred now as they once had been, and thought. Thought and petted Arody to try and calm him. 

A bit awkwardly. Comfort wasn’t in Whippoorwill’s wheelhouse. Still. Arody was on his back, big belly and big tits freely available to Will, and Will took advantage of that. Stroking the nice mounded skin, fertile and fat, made Arody’s stiff little tail begin to relax against the mattress. The little devil’s breaths evened out. 

“I’m sorry,” he rasped out to Will, soon enough. He was still softly crying. “I don’t want to hurt her—“

“Think nothing of it,” Will said stiffly. “It’s no matter. We can wait to do shapeshifting. There’s still talking to animals to learn, not to mention how to make weapons out of the night.”

Arody’s mouth became a little shocked _oh_ , as it always did when Will proposed perfectly normal bits of magic than any halfway learned devil ought to know by the time they were ten. 

But now he didn’t seem to be crying. He seemed interested in spellworking, for once in his life. 

“Talking to animals?” he repeated, rubbing his own tears away with his little golden-clawed hands. “Like how I can sometimes taste what Wanton and Comeuppance feel?”

 _What?_ Will wanted to say. Arody hardly ever seemed to have the exuberant motivation Will wanted in a student, but then he was also forever making pronouncements like _oh yes, the first time I tasted Bright he was all feathery, so when I thought about it I realized he had lost some of his soul in little flakes already_. 

As if it didn’t take devils years to obtain that kind of magnificent soul-sensitivity. As if he just had it, naturally. A prodigy. 

But Will said none of this, as Will was rather unused to paying compliments to anyone, let alone Arody. He simply nodded, and was relieved at how Arody’s whole face brightened. Evidently thrilled by the prospect of talking to his children. 

And the little demon’s hands had now migrated to his mouth. To play with his tongue. Arody spread his legs even more, and thrust his little cunt up. He gazed at Will without any of his earlier fear now. 

“I would like to talk t’m’children,” he lisped out, around the fingers madly stroking the sensitive flesh poking from his mouth. “Thank y’, Will.”

Will couldn’t help a chuckle. 

The little slut. The sweet little slut. Will’s cock was firming up, and his own cunt was wet at this sight. A wriggling, pregnant boy-devil, putting himself on display. Eager for a fuck. Will traced the soft flesh of one of Arody’s tits with a claw, and smiled at how it made the boy arch his back and whine. 

“Where do you want it, my little fuck-fiend?” he found himself purring affectionately. 

Arody didn’t answer with words. He snuck a hand down, arching up more to get it under his rump, and then desperately spread the little rim of his pucker there. 

“Oh, yes,” Will said, still purring. “You do so love a hard cock in your ass.”

Arody blushed magnificently. But he nodded, too. 

“I also like it,” Will said lightly, pressing his hard cockhead to the rim and tracing circles around it. His cock looked firm, blunt, and monstrous next to the closed-tight puckered anal hole. He dragged it up the white skin until he could rub it on the wet cunt lips. Getting it slick enough not to hurt Arody too much. 

Arody, meanwhile, was hiccuping, trying to fuck back on the cock that wouldn’t yet penetrate him. He looked terribly pretty, and very frustrated. 

“L-like that ’s tight,” he managed, still lisping and indistinct, because the dirty little devil-puss still refused to stop stroking his own tongue. “N—not like m' cunt. ‘m too loose there. ‘s ugly.”

Will flicked the edge of one sensitive cunt lip with a nail, making him give a little shriek. 

“How dare you, you imp? We _like_ that loose cunt,” Will mock-chastised, as the cunt in question got, impossibly, even wetter. 

He let his cock dip into it to prove the point, and Arody moaned even louder than before, shaking his little hips and clenching to welcome the fuck. 

“There it is,” Will said approvingly, before fucking out again and watching as Arody whined in protest. 

He examined the cunt, which seemed perfectly fine to him. So it had been used. That was what it was _for_. To power sex magic and to help birth new, frightening, potent souls. To be the conduit for just about anything that mattered. It was lovely and filthy and dark from good use, hard fuckings. Whippoorwill adjusted himself, leaned down so his own tongue could taste the delightful slit, and heard Arody’s wail crescendo in response. 

Such a nice taste. Almond-arsenic. Fat and succulent with power. And if Arody really hated the look and feel of this powerful cunt, well. Then Barnabas could help him get it pretty and virgin-tight again. But to Will that would be something of a waste. This sloppy slit was perfect as it was. 

Though the thought of Barney’s lessons for Arody made his tongue migrate. 

Not too far. Not so far as the big belly, round and plump. But to the little vee below that, the nub just above Arody’s cunt. 

No. No longer a nub. 

Barney had helped Arody grow it out. Not impressively yet. Not huge. It was a small, thick little member, with a fat, pretty sack of balls. Will curled his tongue around those and the stubby cocklet thickened even more, and now Arody was screaming so loud the bed was floating. 

Will grinned. 

Oh, he had an idea. 

He wasn’t loose like Arody. He’d only ever birthed those scarab beetles, after all, and that had been nothing. So when he straddled Arody carefully and sank down onto the cocklet, it was with a hiss. The small pole was thick enough to make his eyes water, going in. 

The way it rubbed his cunt lips made his head spin. The room stank of almonds and storm, magic brewing. Will threw his head back and rode Arody, an Arody who was hiccuping as he came from his cunt, overwhelmed by the newness of fucking. Fucking, not being fucked. No one had broken in the little cocklet before, Will knew. 

Barney was going to hate him. So would the others. They would be spitting envy. 

Will didn’t care. The fit was perfect, and he could feel Arody’s power twining up with his deliciously. He used his tail, meanwhile, to prod Arody’s rear hole. 

When he pushed into that, Arody reacted like he’d been struck by lightning. He was shaking, coming from his cunt again, tongue hanging abandoned and slapping against his tits as he shrieked his pleasure. Will stroked his cock and lost himself in the sensation of both fucking and being fucked. Of tasting a soul, and giving his own up, too. 

“Stick your tail in your cunt,” he managed to rasp out, in command, and he felt the answering spike in pleasure when Arody did it. His lustful little devil did it, curling his tail around Will’s tail, so both could rub together as they fucked, moved in tandem. 

Made everything float, and lightning crack across the sky. When Arody came from his cocklet, for the first time, it was inside Will. Will, who was painting his big belly with spend, and who was lit up with pleasure, and who thought:

_Well. Alright. Let Wanton and Towaquippa wait their turn._

As he coaxed the seed to take in him. 

He supposed they could both put off the shapeshifting for a bit.


	6. Future

Arody gave birth to his daughter at midnight, in the middle of a lashing, vicious storm. 

Tante Cattie said that, for a devil child, this was a very good omen. 

She had come up to help him birth. So had her seven perfect devil-daughters, prepared to keep the witches at bay. Anxious Bright, and pacing Adam. Barnabas and May, desperately muttering out spells of protection for him. 

_It’s alright,_ Arody wanted to tell them. _I’ve done this before._

But all he could do was scream. 

He would have thought that pushing out a little baby would be no harder than birthing an enormous calf, or an oversized pony. 

It was worse. Not for any physical reason. His cunt was trained for this by now. This was his fifth. But the child’s soul had begun to grow in, these past few months. She was a clear, striking blue-green, like the sea that enveloped Veromenica, and her smooth saltwater taste had wrapped itself up in Arody’s soul. Drawing from him, growing. Coming into being. Now that she pushed away, eager to be born, it felt like his own soul would rip into shreds for losing her. He howled and howled, inconsolable. Irrational. The cramps in his belly were nothing to feeling another devil — _his_ — abandoning him for the world. 

“Shhh,” Jack said, over and over, pressing kisses to his hair. “Shhh.” 

Jack had been the only one deemed useful, of the witches. He held Arody in place, firm, as Tante Cattie prodded at the dilating cunt and whispered spells to keep the mad little devil from trying to halt the birth. Devour the soul. Make her his again, his little girl, keep her safe tucked inside him forever. 

Whippoorwill had been banished from the room several times, but had insisted on returning, floating in through the windows or seeping up like a black oil through the floorboards. He was much less useful than Jack. He paced and hissed out worried curses, tail lashing, eyes darting to Arody. Distantly, Arody kept seeing him make aborted gestures towards him, as if wanting to lend him strength, but Tante Cattie kept using her own magic to fling him back against the wall. Or out of the room entirely. 

“He’s mad! He’ll only use your power to try and keep her!”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Whippoorwill would shriek, as he flew through the air, cradling his own belly. “He made her!”

But no. No, a part of Arody knew Tante Cattie was right. It would kill the child to stay in him. No matter how much it hurt, thinking of his little baby exposed to such a cruel world. 

She came out screaming in triumph, and Arody sagged in Jack’s arms and cried softly as the cord was cut. Tante Cattie fed him the afterbirth — almond and ocean power crackling on his tongue — as one of her daughters cleaned the babe. 

She was so small, and so odd. Her tail was like Whippoorwill’s, and her dark skin too. Her pretty nose was Barnabas’, and the mouth was unmistakably Adam’s. Her eyebrows were May’s, and her stubborn chin was Jack’s. 

Arody had taken them all in, all of his coven, and in his womb he had brewed up a new devil, a strong, power-drenched little one. She had parts of all of them. 

When she latched onto his tit, he wept a bit, but not sadly. Jack stroked his hair and whispered kind things to him — _how wonderful, my devil-puss! How beautiful she is!_ as Tante Cattie bustled about, cleaning up. 

Whippoorwill came down the chimney as a puff of black smoke, and coalesced into being before them. His face was very intent, his tongue sticking out. He let it taste the air above the child. Arody watched this, blinking, still a bit dazed. 

“She’s strong,” Whippoorwill concluded, sounding admiring for once. His dark, skinny arms steadied the child in Arody’s weaker ones, as if he could tell that the younger devil was tired and drained. 

“Strong as her mother,” called out Tante Cattie then, belying the way Arody actually felt. 

“What’s her name, puss?” Jack said, still petting Arody. “If you want to tell us.” His touch was firm and kind, and Arody felt himself drooping even more, exhausted. But comfortable and safe, ready to drop into much-needed rest despite the birth-soreness in his cunt. 

He knew the name. At least, the name she would have until she settled on her true one. He supposed that, until then, his name for her would be what called up her power. He supposed he should therefore keep it close, for her sake. He wanted to protect her so much it was like a coal in his gullet, and that was saying something, for he unfortunately knew precisely what it was to swallow coals. 

But he trusted his witches. He blinked drowsily, letting himself press a kiss to the child, as he reflected on this fact. 

He trusted them. They were his. They did not beat him or hurt him. They taught him, held him, sang to him. Gave him his own bed, gave him care of his children. Treated him as their own, and not as a slave or a beast. 

“I’ll tell you when the others are here,” he decided. “Tell you all together.”

Then, warm and calm and protected, he promptly fell asleep.

-

He did not truly think they would force him. They never had. But it was still a surprise when they listened to his weak explanation that his cunt hurt. That he wanted to heal. 

He was so used to being fucked right after birthing. So used to the pain. But now he was just trussed up in blankets and kissed (Bright), brought his meals in his bed while the child slumbered on his breast (Adam), carried down to see his other babes (Jack), stroked on tail and cock until he saw stars (Barney, Will), and relieved of even his most minor chores (May, practical May). 

He was _spoiled_. 

So, for once, he healed. 

“Will?” he asked once night, when the baby had woken them both with her cries, and he had had to put her to his breast again. 

Will, astonishingly, always bore this well. Even though, once woken, he always seemed incapable of sleeping again. He was leaning over a brazier by the fire, muttering things. Possibly he wanted to make it rain frogs again. It was terribly useful to have a rain of frogs. The devils always ate like princes for a week after that, and Arody was so tired and hungry after birthing that he needed to eat a terrible amount. 

“What is it?” Will asked now. 

“W—when will they need my power again? The others?”

Will snorted. 

“When you are good and ready to give it,” he said, a bit carelessly. “They are our thralls, you know. Even if they can call on us for our magic. _We’re_ the devils, not them. And you gave them all a daughter. They shall have to truly honor you for that, and be patient.”

“I don’t want them to grow weak,” Arody said, in a small voice. 

He didn’t. And some of them — Adam, Bright — had given so much. Their souls were flimsy, sweet things. Things that needed bolstering and protecting, like the babe. 

“They were born weak,” Whippoorwill said irritably. “All humans are.”

Arody blinked. 

He thought perhaps everyone was. Him too. He had been such a pitiful, defenseless thing for so long. 

Until he had loved. Been allowed to love. Now he was stronger. And when he wasn’t so strong, he could rest. He could clutch his daughter and let his eyes close, and fall asleep tasting the lovely spell that was being safe and cared for. 

-

She spoke at nine weeks. Babbled, really. By then Whippoorwill had begun to show, his own belly rounded, and had decided he too had the maternal instinct. Will would cart the babe about the house and garden while Arody slumbered. 

Birthing another devil left him fit to do nothing but eat and sleep and be tended to. He had never known such indulgence. He would wake, stick out his tongue and taste the baby’s giggles as she was bounced on Bright’s knee in the kitchen, or kissed and adored by May. Then he would sigh, happy, turn over, and sleep again. At least until his girl needed feeding. 

More than two months had passed like this, and now she was babbling. 

Lightning cracked across the sky. Devils, when they spoke, spoke spells. He could hear Adam cursing in the garden, rushing to get Wanton and Comeuppance safe into the stable before the storm began in earnest. Jack thundering up the stairs to get the upper windows papered up. 

Already it sounded like the sky was breaking. 

But Will was cooing encouragement at their little girl, somewhere in the great room. 

Arody pushed himself up in his bed. Stumbled out. His legs felt ungainly. His body was thinner than before, but there was no soreness. Tongue, tail, cunt, and cock felt a-shiver, as his old hungers awoke with him. He pulled on a green dressing gown Barnabas had sewn him, and walked unsteadily to the landing, then down the stair. 

By the time he had stumbled into the great room, they were all there. Attending to the new devil, such a tiny one, but growing fast. Much faster than normal children. She smacked a rag doll one of the witches must have made her against the floor, delighted by the storm outside. The one she had caused. 

“Bang!” she shrieked, and for her efforts she had charmed five humans and a devil, who rushed to tell her how clever she was. “Bang! Tell Mama!”

“Nah, honey. He’s sleeping,” Barnabas said. He was kneeling by the girl, building something from blocks. Her forked tongue snuck out and knocked it over, and she erupted into giggles at the chaos. 

“Bang! Want Mama!”

“I’m here,” Arody said. 

They all looked to him, but he only had eyes for her. She stared back at him and broke into a smile. Her eyes were human eyes, though she was a devil. Large, black, long-lashed, and beautiful. He had thought they were Bright’s eyes, the first time he had seen them. 

Power burst across the sky, and the coven’s power painted the world inside the house vivid and warm, herbal and tangy and too-sweet and smoky and more. Arody let the comfort wash over him, as he picked up his girl and held her close. She hugged him on instinct. 

He put his nose to her unruly tangle of hair and inhaled nothing but good. And there was that taste again. The taste of a wide open future, free of pain. 

“I’m here, Maria,” Arody said, and was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! A bizarrely wholesome ending for such twisted porn, but what can you do.
> 
> IDK if I will ever write a sequel to this, purely because RL is kicking my ass right now. But if I do I am thinking a devil-threesome with Yalagulo, who I don’t know much about but I DO know is very likely to hit all my size kink buttons 😈


End file.
